Mel Granger, Dark Witch
by Codex Serpens
Summary: Mel is Hermione and Ron's daughter, raised by Ginny and Harry. Ron is in Azkaban for Hermione's murder. Her mother's posthumous words tell her the truth, and Ginny's abuse finally drives Mel into the Dark Arts. Britain has a new Dark Lady to fear.
1. Chapter 1: A Love Debt

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J. K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. Any characters or situations that are unknown in the Harry Potter series are the author's intellectual property and should not be used without permission.

Pursuant to the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 and the Digital Millennium Copywrite Act of 1998, this work is copywrited 2007 with all rights expressly reserved by its author unless explicitly granted. No portion may be reproduced in any fashion without the express written and notarized permission of the author.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Harry Potter characters. All characters are creations of Joanne K Rowling, 2007, to whom I am deeply indebted.

Standard Disclaimer: This story may contain sexually graphic and explicit material and it is not suitable for minors. If you are a minor, please leave now, as it is illegal for you to be here. If it is illegal for you to read or view sexually explicit material in the community you view such material, please leave now. This story and characters are purely fictional and any resemblance to events or persons (living or dead) is purely coincidental. If you are offended by sexually explicit stories, please read no further. These stories are just that, stories, and may or may not reflect the opinions of the author.

Right, now my own words, not the legalese I've shamelessly copied and pasted above. There are only so many situations and new ideas one could dream within the H.P. universe; almost everything has been written about in fan-fiction, and I couldn't possibly hope to read and know all fan-fics posted on the web.

Therefore, I claim no property over these ideas and adventures, nor have I intentionally copied or appropriated material from other writers. Some concepts incorporated in this story might be property of better writers, and I apologize for not crediting them because I truly couldn't track all of them down...

* * *

Attention! This story is based on an idea (challenge) by "pstibbons" titled "Mel Granger, Dark Witch" and it will follow all of its parameters. You may wish to read them in advance, but that will spoil a few surprises in the story.

Thanks to "pstibbons" for all the suggestions and input, which turned my drafts into a much better and more enjoyable story!

* * *

**Mel Granger, Dark Witch**

**Chapter 1: A Love Debt**

Sawdust continued to fall from the wooden beams above, streaking past the few dying afternoon rays of the sun that shone through the small window close to the ceiling of the house cellar. Every step, either soft or rushed, heavy or light perpetuated the particle shower that caused Juliette Melanie Granger to sneeze and lose her concentration.

Mel, as she preferred to be called, sat on top of a wooden barrel and had her back pressed against the humid wall with both feet firmly planted against a pillar, her knees bent so that she could lean the yellowed book on her thighs. Uncle Harry had departed for Norway that morning, so her duties weren't required until he returned and she had walked down to her living space before Aunt Ginevra got angry at her.

Inside the cellar were many of the usual discarded household items, undesired furniture and worthless things nobody wanted. It was only fitting for her to be there then. What surprised Mel when she'd set out to investigate the cellar many years ago was the amount of dusty old trunks; there was a pile of them and she was delighted at what she found inside the first one: books.

Uncle Harry had taken it upon himself to teach all his children to read and write, as well as Muggle and wizard things like mathematics and runes while he was home. He always said he didn't want his children to feel lost in the broader world of Muggles and to be prepared for Hogwarts but aunt Ginevra usually dismissed him saying Muggles were stupid and it was ridiculous to teach something they'd learn in Hogwarts anyway.

That was one of a hundred different topics her uncle would choose to fight about when they were at home together, until uncle Harry backs down and admits his wife is right. He always does.

So ever since she learned enough to read by herself, Mel would pop the topmost trunk open and grab a handful of books to enjoy as she was doing now. She was fascinated by the Muggle books on human anatomy, they were in full colour and showed every organ, muscle and bone the human body was made of. Sometimes she wondered if wizards had different organs; she'd have to wait until attending Hogwarts to know.

"Then, because of his ob-- obin-- obnoxious attitude," she read with a whisper and paused to think. "What the bloody hell does obnoxious mean?" Mel asked no one in particular and underlined the word with a piece of coal, before resuming her reading of Brinn Bubblin and the Hall of Mysteries. The stories featuring the accidental young wizard hero were entertaining and she loved the Baron Bonnamorte character the most. The Baron was an evil Dark Lord that continuously tried to kill Brinn but, because of sheer dumb luck, the young boy kept surviving and besting him.

Her uncle Harry told her she was too young to read such tales, but at nine years old she felt as mature as she'd ever felt in her not-so-happy life. She knew her duty was to keep Harry happy, however, so she trained herself to hide her emotions, keep her mouth shut about what happened when he was away and be the best companion she could be to him. Thankfully both Jimmy and Frida were away at Hogwarts now, which allowed Mel to perform better without having to escape their taunts and constant pushing and punching. Aunt Ginevra had warned her severely against complaining since it was her duty to provide entertainment for the Potter-Weasley heirs too.

After all, it was her fault that her mother was dead, and it was her fault that her father was in prison for life.

Mel remembered it as if it was yesterday, this happened after they moved from Potter Manor and she was no older than four or five years old. Uncle Harry had hugged her and kissed her before leaving. He never saw the furious look in his wife and children's eyes. Uncle Harry never does.

When aunt Ginevra dragged her by the hair into the cellar that morning, she had yelled that her mum and dad were coming to find her and rescue her, but all she earned besides a heavy slap on the face that knocked a couple of milk-teeth out was the sad reason she was kept in this house. "Shut up, Granger!" aunt Ginevra had yelled. "Your filthy mother's dead, and my brother's in Azkaban Prison because of you!"

The red-haired woman had continued to rant and slapped her again and again, "My poor deluded Harry doesn't see things clearly and decided to _adopt_ you! Merlin knows the scarlet woman that spit _you_ out her womb didn't care for you. I keep you here because it makes Harry _happy_, and you better remember that," she finished and slammed the door before casting a spell that locked and silenced the cellar.

Shaking her unmanageable dark-red mane of bushy hair and coming out of her reverie, she continued to read. "I need to find that blasted dictionary," she mumbled, underlining yet another word and sneezing again. Aunt Ginevra was pacing the hallway, probably wondering which fancy party to attend tonight. She never understood why so many different wizards kept knocking on her door for different parties every night her uncle was away; they all had different names and voices, and sometimes her aunt would moan and yell the weirdest things while gasping for breath and banging the walls.

Mel looked up and sighed, briefly wondering if it was right to hurt uncle Harry by disappearing while he was away demonstrating the newest products from Umbridge Undry, the premier thick-bottom cauldron brand in Britain that he worked for as a secondary job. Her uncle always brought her miniature cauldrons or beginner potions kits back from his business travels, and he enjoyed talking about the newest materials or unbreakable handles his company produced at the dinner table.

The House of Potter had suffered greatly in terms of material wealth. Now that she was old enough to understand, she knew why there was so much rage shining in aunt Ginevra's eyes when they moved from the big fancy house that was Potter Manor to the house they now lived in. Back then, she at least had a decent tiny service room instead of a cellar.

Her uncle Harry still worked at the Ministry for Magic in some smaller department, but her aunt always complained the money wasn't enough and that she had an image to uphold; soon after that he'd started spending more and more time away from home, and since he started working for the cauldron company, she only ever saw of him for weekends and holidays.

It was while looking for a place to hide her potions ingredients and small gold cauldrons that she found the crawling space leading from the north wall of the cellar into the forest, a couple hundred yards away. She'd shimmy up the tunnel after her aunt locked her in and run into the surrounding forest, where she soon built a makeshift shack with fallen branches and old linen sheets to house her laboratory. This was her third attempt at a stable shack, but it was the longer lasting she'd built so far.

She was certain that she could find enough food to survive out there in the forest, but her debt to uncle Harry for adopting her, even if he had no clue as to what happened in his own house when he was away, was enough to discourage her from running. Telling him how aunt Ginevra treated her would be even worse, because if it would devastate him to lose his "darling Julie", it would kill him to lose his entire family once he saw them for what they really were. Besides, the few days she shared with him were the only moments she actually felt worthy of being loved.

Her birthday was coming soon and she hoped uncle Harry would be home, because April fifteens without him were very painful and she _really_ needed the silver ladle she'd told him she wanted as a gift. With another heavy sigh, Mel returned to her reading while cursing her lack of focus and turned the page, underlining yet another word on the page before the day finally faded into night.

Sleeping in the cellar was nowhere as comfortable as sleeping in her room, which she couldn't use while aunt Ginevra was alone. A few rolled up sheets made for a decent pillow and an old buffalo skin provided more than enough warmth; the only uncomfortable part were the horns. And the ticks. She _really_ needed that silver ladle.

* * *

"Good morning sleepy head," greeted a male voice she could recognize anywhere. Uncle Harry was knocking on the doorway to Mel's room, and she slowly opened her eyes. Aunt Ginevra had dragged her up the night before and yelled at her about keeping Harry happy and repaying her debt to them as customary, before tossing her into the tub filled to the brim with cold water. "Not that it'd be enough to wash the filth out of you," she had commented with a sneer.

"Mornin' uncle Harry," she replied, trying to hide her forearm which she was certain would be bruised from yesterday. She forgot how proficient in healing spells her aunt could be.

"Happy birthday Julie!" he said and sat on her bed, holding a wrapped package in his hand. It was long and thick, the paper had fuming cauldrons all around and the present was topped by a shining red bow. "I'm needed at the workshop today, I'm sorry I'll miss your party but I'm sure Ginny will be happy to tell me all about it tonight."

Mel's smile faltered but she quickly hid it by hugging her uncle and thanking him, as well as wishing him a good day at work. Her uncle still held to the idea that Mel had a good and friendly relationship with her Weasley cousins and relatives in general, but she knew her grandmother despised her even more than her aunt. Her grandfather Arthur, however, sometimes looked at her with tears in his eyes and then turned away, yet never spoke to her at all.

"Uncle Harry?"

"Yes darling?"

"Why don't I have any Granger grandparents?" she asked, double checking that aunt Ginevra wasn't lurking nearby. Sensing him tense, Mel released her hug and sat back, holding the present against her chest.

"Ginny and I told you your mother was ... attacked by bad wizards called Death Eaters. Well these same wizards they--" Harry paused to clear his eyes with the back of his hand. "These wizards, they attacked your Muggle grandparents a few months before that, darling."

Mel knew the story about these bad wizards blaming her father for her mother's death, as it was what her relatives had told her the day uncle Harry returned home barely a week after aunt Ginevra had slapped her for daring to dream that she'd be rescued. Mel also knew that unlike her aunt, Harry didn't blame her for what happened.

"I-- I'm sorry, I have to go..." her uncle said and left the bedroom. Wasting no time, she unwrapped the box and admired the shining silver ladle, noticing the same engraving uncle Harry always added to every gift, "To my darling Julie."

She heard the tell-tale swoosh of a floo connection and quickly did the bed, removed the nice clothes she was told to wear whenever uncle Harry was home and donned the loose, tattered old robes aunt Ginevra insisted she wear when they were alone. Hiding the ladle inside her robe, she walked into the hallway and was promptly dragged down to the cellar.

"Here," her aunt said and handed her an old newspaper, "have a happy birthday you filthy spawn."

The newspaper was over a decade old, bearing the name Daily Prophet in bold on top and had an entire front page dedicated to "Muggleborn Manipulations in the Open!" The article revealed how one Hermione J. Weasley, ne Granger, had used illegal means and coercion to ensnare a pureblood light family heir by bearing his child. It also pointed to her betrayal of said wizard with the world's greatest hero Harry Potter and the successful Quidditch player Viktor Krum, who was photographed in a compromising position with the traitorous witch.

A picture of a couple in bed, obscured by a thin curtain, showed the head of a woman with uncontrollable hair like Mel's, only it seemed to be darker in colour. The article also cast serious doubt regarding paternity of the unborn child, accusing her uncle Harry of being the father after he was found guilty of assault on Ronald Weasley, who was discovered almost dead in Knockturn Alley and had accused Harry as his attacker.

In further detail, the newspaper described how then current investigations pointed to her mother Hermione murdering her very own parents to force Mel's father Ronald to comfort her, and theorized that she then subjugated him with love potions to marry her. Another moving picture of a very pregnant Hermione marrying a red-haired man accompanied that part of the article.

By this time Mel was crying and sobbing, and turned the page with trembling hands to read more. This was a completely different story from what uncle Harry had told her, but it still didn't mean she was the cause of her mother's death and her father's imprisonment.

The rest of the article detailed her mother's rebel exploits as an activist against the established wizarding world traditions and culture, portraying her as a fanatical witch who didn't shy away from using any of the unforgivable curses, and included proof of her constant use of the imperius against fellow witches and wizards.

"My mum was worse than a Death Eater..." Mel whispered between sobs. "Bloody hell I'm a dark witch's daughter!"

Throwing the old newspaper away, she stood up and paced the cluttered cellar back and forth, wiping her tears and taking deep breaths to calm herself. She could certainly understand uncle Harry's reticence to tell her about her true heritage, and from what little she knew her mum and dad had been close friends with him in the fight against Death Eaters and their Dark Lord, which made things even worse.

"No wonder aunt Ginevra hates me," she mumbled and continued to pace, "but uncle Harry likes me anyway, and I just can't just tell him I know my mum was a vicious killer!" Mel was startled out of her thoughts by moans and wall banging coming from the master bedroom, and she realized uncle Harry had probably flooed in to announce he wasn't coming home tonight.

Deciding her days of feeling sorry for herself were over, she began to plan her independent future right then and there. Most important in her mind was saving her uncle the heartache of losing his friend's daughter overnight, because she always felt his love for her was true even if he couldn't see how his family hated her with a passion. So Melanie would continue to fulfil her duties, all the while learning as much as she could about magic and Muggles, and try to focus her mind only on those purposes, which she'd always found a very difficult thing to do.

* * *

Summer break meant Jimmy and Frida Potter were back from Hogwarts, which in turn meant Mel was in for a world of trouble. Her daily routine using the tunnel from the cellar to the forest would have to be cut short, or else the king and queen of Gryffindor, as they had named themselves, would notice her absence and become suspicious.

In the last couple of months since her tenth birthday, she'd been able to explore further into the forest and found a small hamlet inhabited by dozens of Muggles and an old hag, and that was saying a lot given that hags looked old by their own nature. The Muggles were friendly enough, she'd get a free meal or ice-cream once in a while, and she marvelled at the portables they carried around.

A "portable" was a thick sheet of parchment that had full colours like a painting and would show everything the Muggle wanted, from a book to a picture and even long stories enacted as if little people were performing inside the parchment itself! Aunt Ginevra was wrong, Muggles weren't stupid at all. Certainly they wasted their time and effort riding these horseless carriages to go places and used big contraptions to lift weight, actions a wizard could do with a flick of his wand, but they were happy people despite their severe limitations.

When Mel wasn't among the funny Muggles, she'd wander to the southern parts of the forest, where a pack of werewolves had recently opened a clearing and established a tiny community. She noticed three or four mixed families that did everything together. There were no hidden children in cellars. The second thing that drew her attention was that the closer the full-moon got, the more anxious they were and the less food they consumed. The turned wizards among them would talk about how many galleons short they were that month and the Muggle werewolves returned with chains and shackles they'd purchased nearby.

Unfortunately, she had forgotten what the books on magical creatures said about the enhanced sense of smell a human turned werewolf developed. She was caught spying by a couple of young boys.

"Oi, whelp! Watcha doin' here?"

Mel jumped in the air and yelped, before crossing her arms and staring up at the boys that found her. "I live down that way, and ... well, since we're neighbours, I'd thought it nice to ... er ... say hello?"

"She don't smell like one of us, does she Mike?" the taller of the two said, making a show of sniffing the air.

"Aye, I reckon she don't know she's bitten more than she can chew," the other replied, "though I do smell somethin' ... pleasant about her," he added, licking his lips. That gesture made Mel take a step back and ponder her chances of outrunning them.

"_Michael? John Paul? Where the devils are you?_" called a female voice from the clearing that made both boys cringe. "You'd better finish washing 'em dishes or I'll pelt yer hides!"

Trying to stop her urge to laugh at the wincing, scared werewolves, Mel bit her lower lip and then asked with a raised eyebrow. "Got something more ... pleasant to do all of the sudden?"

"Har bloody har," Michael said and walked into the clearing with slumped shoulders, followed by John Paul who looked just as deflated.

"Er... Can I help?" she asked, actually surprising the older boys who looked between them and shrugged.

"Sure, though you're gonna see some ... weird stuff goin' round here," John Paul explained, a tad hesitant.

"No worries, I know you're wolves and I'm a witch myself," Mel said and stepped up to them, walking towards a wooden hut. She had to actually look back at the surprised boys and wait for them to start walking again.

"I'm JP, and this is my cousin Mike," the taller boy introduced and extended his hand, which she immediately shook while introducing herself as simply Mel.

"Alright Simply Mel, now what d'you know about dishes?" Mike asked.

"That they break if you drop them?"

JP snorted and opened the door into a small kitchen, where a middle-aged woman stood wand at hand. The three youngsters stopped dead on their tracks and Mike took upon the job of introducing his dear mother to Mel. The woman narrowed her eyes dangerously and turned away, but not before growling at her because she was a stranger to their kind and wasn't really welcome there.

"Your mum reminds of my aunt," she said.

"Is she nice?"

"_Far_ from it," Mel replied and started on the dishes while JP dried and Mike stored them away. After ten minutes and only a single broken plate, they finished and walked outside to talk under the afternoon sun.

"Oi, Simply Mel, d'you have any wolves in your family?"

"Not that I know of, though an estranged uncle was bitten and clawed by one many years ago. It wasn't a full-moon so..."

"No infection then, lucky bastard."

Mel shrugged and then asked something else. "Are you two attending Hogwarts?"

Mike and JP looked at her as if she were deranged. "You takin' the mickey on us? How the hell d'you reckon we'd be accepted there?"

"Or pay for it, anyway," Mike added.

"Is it expensive then?" asked Mel, truly curious about this since she'd never heard any comments about Hogwarts tuition. She also knew aunt Ginevra would _never_ allow her to attend if it meant paying for it, unless uncle Harry put his foot down.

"It's bloody expensive alright... Even if they'd allow us in, it'd be ... what's that word, undifordeable?"

"Unaffordable, JP," Mel supplied, "but why the hell wouldn't they send you a letter? I mean there's a bloody book that writes all the wizards' names, isn't there?"

Mike shifted and frowned, "I reckon they scratch you out of it after you get bitten..."

* * *

Dinner with werewolves had become an interesting weekly event that Mel tried to partake in as much as she could, besides JP was really cute and Mike made her laugh, something not even her uncle Harry managed to bring out of her lately. September the first was _finally_ around the corner and she'd have time to continue her potions and read in peace without Jimmy's leering and Frida's scathing remarks. They didn't dare hurt her while Harry stayed at home for three whole weeks.

Her uncle had become suspicious of her change in attitude and had actually asked if he'd done something to hurt her. Mel stared at him for a few seconds wondering why this poor man was considered the wizarding world's hero if he was oblivious to the way his family treated her. Yet it was clear he loved her and she loved him back because he'd taken her in, despite who her mother had been and the damage she'd done to the Weasleys.

"No uncle Harry, you haven't," she replied and hugged him. He always liked her hugs the best, she could tell because every time his children did it he'd flinch a little, but was completely relaxed when Mel initiated one.

"By this time next year you're going the be preparing for Hogwarts," he told her with a smile. "In fact, I'd like you to have something. Come with me."

She followed him to the kitchen and he showed her the door to the cellar, explaining what it was as if she'd never been dragged in there before. They climbed downstairs and he used a lumos spell to make his way around the clatter, stumbling twice until he found the pile of trunks against the farthest wall. "Huh... Now I know where you got all those books from, Juliette," he commented, looking inside the half full topmost trunk.

Mel winced at her spoken first name but, as required by her duties and debt, simply smiled. "Yeah, I found those a while back..."

"These were all your mother's, you know?" he said and paused, staring at the wall absent-mindedly. "Anyway, we're here to find _one_ trunk in particular," uncle Harry added and began to levitate the heavy luggage around. He swished and flicked, moving and wiping them until he found what he was looking for. "There it is!"

She followed his pointed finger and found a brown trunk with a small plaque that read H. Granger in cursive letters. Her uncle waved his wand again and the locks flipped open, then he lifted the lid and stood back, "It's been so long, I can't even remember _when_ I put these here..." he whispered and rubbed his forehead.

Mel put a hand on his shoulder and he looked down at her, mumbled an apology and walked away, leaving her alone with her murky past. Sighing and deciding to make the best of this situation, she began to rummage through her evil mum's forgotten things. "Planner, planner, Hogwarts: A History, planner, shoe! Bean bag, planner, _nice_ wand! Another shoe that doesn't match... _Wicked_, there's a copy of Moste Potente Potions in here!"

Pulling the thick book out, she sat in her customary spot on top of the wooden barrel with her legs against the pillar and began to read. Soon enough some potions had picked her interest and she fetched one her mother's planners to make some notes. Turning it upside down and over to use the back end as a starting page, she dug for a quill and ink.

"I wonder what kind of tool Muggles use for writing," she suddenly thought while holding her quill an inch above the page. "Focus dammit! Bloody scattered brain I've inherited..."

After filling a couple of pages with her questions and notations, Mel flipped ahead on the planner and noticed what should be her mum's latest notes in it. The handwriting was neat and curvy, unlike her own spiked and wobbly script, and the text had some words underlined and others inked in red. Turning it upside down, she began to read from the top.

_Concluded 4th attempt. Results were negative for m.p.m. but addition of_ unicorn tears _created following symptoms:  
- Doubt; effect was temporary and countered by routine monthly charms only, ingested s.p. was ineffective.  
- Better body control; immediate reaction as proven by t.c.i. test.  
- Magical discharge; unpredictable events in exponential ladder over time, potential danger to self!_

"What the _hell_ is all of this?" She flipped a few pages back and looked a humongous list of ingredients with detailed characteristics and proper storage conditions. There were also references to previous attempts and their results, including all those annoying acronyms that didn't mean anything to her. "Probably some nasty evil potion she was creating," Mel concluded and frowned at the raised voices upstairs.

The door leading down to the cellar was kept unlocked while her uncle was home, and the sounds of a yelling match between the Potters came through. She ignored it because she knew who'd win anyway; aunt Ginevra always won. Which was why she feared that she wouldn't be able to go to Hogwarts at all.

This time her aunt had picked her favourite topic to fight about, the You Should be an Auror or a Quidditch Star routine. She'd berate him for the lack of money, which coincidently she'd squandered herself a few years back when they still lived in Potter Manor, and then tell him he was the amazing Boy-Who-Lived and that it was beneath him to be working at a cauldron factory as a secondary job to his position in the Ministry for Magic.

He'd stand there and listen to her rant, before yelling that this was all he was worthy of and that all he needed was a happy family, until finally acknowledging she was right and that he'd try to bring more galleons home. Uncle Harry would be spending even more time away from now on, which probably was aunt Ginevra's desire all along.

* * *

Christmas was a family holiday she was always dragged to, despite it being the worst day of the year as far as Mel was concerned. Doubly so this year after her discovery that she was the daughter of an evil witch who'd used her as a tool to achieve her goals.

After discovering the strange potion in one of her mum's planners, she had carefully organized everything she ever wrote and stuffed it inside a single trunk, including her notebooks from Hogwarts and those wretched planners. She'd also found many pamphlets and manifestos denouncing inequality among wizards due to blood status and unfair subjugation of magical creatures that looked really interesting, but knowing her mother had probably killed people as part of her campaigns had made her throw those into the do-not-touch trunk too.

That trunk was then sealed with copious amounts of wax, wrapped in a chain and bathed in holy water for good measure. And then buried under a dozen empty old cases of butterbeer.

Mel had tried to speak with a Weasley to find out more about her father that Christmas evening at the Burrow. Grandmother Weasley wouldn't acknowledge her existence but uncles Percival and George, the younger of which she'd never met before, would at least look at her. Her father Ronald had been a victim in the situation she now knew the truth of, but since everyone around her insisted in the official tale that Death Eaters had murdered her mum and blamed her dad for it, they'd either dismiss her questions or say "he's sorry for leaving you" and then walk away. It was quite annoying, actually.

Aunt Ginevra had been keeping an eye on her and throwing angry scowls all the time and she finally decided to sit outside the kitchen door and remain seated there until it was time to go. She wished she'd thought ahead to bring a book or something.

Watching the snow quickly became boring, and she felt her eyelids grow heavier and heavier, until the sound of the kitchen door being pushed open woke her up and she sat straighter against the wall.

"Hey mini-Herms," greeted her uncle George in a hushed voice while looking back into the house. She winced at the allusion to her dark witch mother's name and looked up at the red-haired man who was missing an ear. "I saw your look of ... disappointment earlier, when you were asking about my brother."

Mel nodded in silence, hoping to hear something about him after all.

"Well, I ... I'm not sure if you've noticed this is the first time I've been at the Burrow for Christmas? Or at all for over eight years," he added sombrely while stirring his glass.

She nodded again, "Yeah, I know there's another two of you that I've never met. Uncles Will and Charles, right?"

"True, Bill and Charlie they ... feel so ashamed from what Ron did. As do I," he said and scrunched his face before downing the rest of his firewhiskey. "I'm really sorry for--"

"_George!_ Leave the creature alone, I've told you she's unstable," admonished aunt Ginevra before grabbing Mel's one-eared uncle and dragging him back inside. "Now tell me again about your wife and kids! You should've brought them along..." her voice trailed out of the family room.

The interrupted conversation had startled her, why would _they_ be ashamed of something her _father_ did? It didn't make any sense! Then again, he was drinking a lot of that burning drink. She'd sipped a little of it earlier and after coughing for a good fifteen minutes, vowed never to touch firewhiskey again in her life.

Raised voices drew her attention back to the house and she peeked over the kitchen window, from where she could see the doorway into the sitting room. Uncle George was yelling and waving his arms around, while aunt Ginevra pointed her finger at him and then between her and uncle Harry.

"I can't believe you're still sticking to that _fuckin' crap_ about Death Eaters!"

"_That's the effing truth, George!_" yelled her aunt.

"That's a load of _bloody hogwash and you know it!_ All of you ... I'm ashamed of being related to you all," her uncle said and dissApparated.

Now _that_ was even more strange. Uncle George knew the story about dark wizards attacking her mother and blaming her dad for it was false, but why would he be sorry for something her father did, then? Perhaps he'd failed to see the evil in her mum and could've avoided this whole mess?

On the other hand, Mel had assumed her father was in Azkaban for killing her mother after he realized what a dark witch she was and what she'd done. But if that was the case, why would half of the Weasleys be ashamed of him? Running her hands over her face, she berated herself for not thinking things clearly. What she needed was solid, verifiable information; she needed to investigate her mother's trunk.

The door creaked open again, this time it was her uncle Harry. "There you are, Juliette. Been looking for you all over the place."

"Hey uncle Harry."

"It's nice and welcoming here at the Burrow, isn't it?"

"Of course," Mel answered, patting the floor next to her. Sometimes her uncle looked more like a five-year-old child than the thirty-something wizard he really was.

Her uncle sat and stared at the snowy landscape, his eyes fixed on an unseen point in space. "I learnt what a family is here at the Burrow, back when I was just a little older than you are now. You see, my relatives they ... didn't know how to treat a child."

"Oh, did they keep you locked in a cellar?"

Uncle Harry turned a sharp look back at her, "Don't even joke about something like that! Children are sacred, and ... children, my children are great, aren't they?"

Mel blanched. Her uncle _really_ had no idea what happened at home, and the spark that her off-handed comment had started died within a few seconds. She'd always tried to hint or tell him but aunt Ginevra was always there, watching. Well, aunt Ginevra was still inside and she had the perfect opportunity.

"Aunt Ginevra keeps me in the cellar when you're away."

His face turned grave again and his eyebrows knitted together, he stiffened suddenly and tried to stand up, but lost his footing and fell on his knee. After rubbing it absently, he looked at her again but the spark was gone, "I understand you've suffered so much, darling Julie. Please, please don't lie about these things?"

He then stood up again and walked back into the house, telling her to get ready to leave in ten minutes and to go play with her cousins in the snow.

Mel waited for her uncle to leave and began to cry.

* * *

The months of decaying Winter and blossoming Spring had given Mel time to study a good portion of what her mother's trunks contained. That, and the fact uncle Harry was working on weekends whenever he was back in Britain.

She was thankful for her evil mum's organized nature, for every book had a name and a date, as did the planners and notes and scrolls. It had taken a full two weeks to sort everything and rummage through old clothes to find more books and written material, as if someone not very gifted with packing spells had come to her house with half a dozen trunks and squeezed everything she had inside.

Cataloguing her remaining possessions had taken a bit more caution, she didn't want to end up blown away to smithereens by some cursed locket or whatever dark artefacts she might have found. "Weird, there's nothing out of the ordinary in here," Mel had said after emptying the last trunk.

Like every good investigative Auror, she'd began building her mother's habits by looking through her things, trying to understand what had driven her into the path of the Dark Arts. Her surprise came when she opened a small bean bag and found a single sealed scroll bearing a letter from Hermione to her.

_Beloved Juliette,_

_Today is the eleventh of April, four days until your first birthday. I've taken the habit of writing more or less the same letter to you every week and hiding copies of it inside several of my personal possessions; this one is inside a small bean bag. Before you continue reading please know that I love you with all my heart and soul._

_My name is Hermione Jane Granger and I'm your mother. I am a witch and so are you, I know it because I've carried you inside my body for eight wonderful months and have taken care of you ever since I knew I was expecting you. Your summoning skills are quite impressive, you can call stuffed hippogriffs and unicorns from your nursery all the way to the kitchen sometimes._

_Your name, in case they have changed it, is Juliette Melanie Granger. The bag where you found this scroll would only show it to you by means of a blood charm, and if you're old enough please feel free to confirm this with your wand._

_Because you are reading this letter, I must have failed you in a way that rips my heart apart just by thinking about it. I've left you alone in this world._

_Worse still, I haven't completed the task I've set out to perform four years ago. Trust no one around you, and be wary of anyone related to the Weasley name. Your paternal heritage is also magical, for you are the daughter of one Ronald Bilius Weasley, sixth son of Arthur Weasley, current Head of the Family. Please forgive me for it._

_Four years ago, returning from a twelve day vacation with my parents, I suffered an accident that killed me. Literally. The moment I left my body, magical bindings and harnesses I had never felt were released, as were my true memories of certain events. I vowed to stay alive and free another enslaved soul like mine; that of Harry Potter, my friend and my love._

_My dearest daughter, know that I love you above all else and I'll never regret giving birth to you. I've defended you with my life and have never allowed your father to come anywhere near you, but I must remain close to him and his family if I am to fulfil my vow._

_Archaic wizard law prevents me from making legal provisions for your future, such as instructing that this information be delivered to you immediately, or as soon as you reach scholarship age, in case of my death. Please take a tiny droplet of your blood and drop it inside the bag where you found this scroll, then without a wand, incant the following words: Lagrange aeternus. All shall be revealed._

_All my Love,_

_Mummy_

Mel still refused to open the bag. She was confused and upset, she didn't know what to believe or what to do. What she did know, was that aunt Ginevra could never find out about her mother's letter and possessions, so with the help of a couple of werewolves, she'd built a fourth attempt at a solid building to house her laboratory and stored all the trunks and books in the resulting shack.

Her friends JP and Mike from the werewolf community had helped a lot, but also noticed her withdrawn and pensive mood and tried their best to cheer her up. Which they did in spades. These two boys were twelve and eleven respectively, both turned at an early age while camping with their family in Wales, and being cousins, they managed to catch each other's jokes on the fly and provide endless laughs.

While JP had a series of deep scars criss-crossing the right side of his face, Mike had a bitten ear, similar to that of old mice, all jagged and bent. She didn't mind those flaws because they weren't of their own doing. Besides, she liked running her fingers over Mike's ear and he was a sucker for an ear-scratch. Much like JP was fond of a good belly-scratch himself.

When the three of them weren't dodging Mike's dear mother's hexes, they'd be found wandering the Muggle hamlet of Bardle or exploring the dense forest to the south. Both boys had wands of their own but neither had the quality of craftsmanship and magical properties Mel's inherited wand had. It was an Ollivander original, after all.

It was Tuesday afternoon and they were relaxing against a fallen tree after tricking a Muggle into believing they were a Yeti. The man had even taken a few pictures of them before running away pleading for his life.

"Simply Mel, try 'em blasting hexes again, but this time aim _away_ from us, okay whelp?"

She showed them her tongue and prepared her wand, nodding at them. Mike banished a branch into the air and she trailed it with her eyes, willing her hand to aim at the same spot. "Confringo!"

Squelch!

"Holy shite!"

"Bugger..."

"Bloody hell, I exploded a ruddy bird!" she said and looked at the tip of her wand, then at the animal remains, before shaking her head.

"How come you can Accio a freakin' bowl of ice-cream from across town, blast a damn bird sixty yards away, but you can't make a Protego to save yer scrawny arse?" JP asked, truly puzzled.

"I don't have a scrawny arse!" Mel complained and looked over her shoulder at herself. "Do I?"

The boys laughed and banished a rock and a branch again, this time Mel hit the branch but missed the rock and hit a wild boar. A very unfortunate wild boar.

Unable to attend Hogwarts, the vast majority of werewolf wizards and witches had to rely on spell-casting knowledge handed down by their elders, and were also free to learn and try whatever spells they could get their hands on. Because they were discriminated against, it was common for them to learn defensive and duelling spells and hexes more than anything else.

Mel was taking advantage of this situation knowing that the middle of a forest was safe from any Ministry for Magic monitoring. And the few spells they'd cast in the Muggle hamlet either weren't registered or the location was simply too unimportant to merit a team of obliviators and an Auror investigation.

After a fulfilling dinner of pork chops cooked over a magical fire pit, Mel hugged the boys goodnight and walked back towards uncle Harry's home. She jumped into the tunnel and crawled back into the cellar, hoping to focus her mind on a good old potions handbook instead of deciding if she wanted to know about her mother's plight.

* * *

Uncle Harry only came home to sleep at night whenever he was in Britain, which was about once every month or so, and aunt Ginevra had convinced him Mel's bedroom door was always closed because she'd gone to bed early and was still sleeping in the mornings. He was away in France for her eleventh birthday, yet managed to send her an owl with a wrapped package, which brightened her day.

She was crafting a few variations on the cutis-petreus draught, which mimicked the petrificus totalus spell, but to give one's skin hard-rock strength without paralysing the body. Two of her frogs had actually survived the transformation, but one was so soft it crumbled into fine powder at first touch, and the other had turned its skin into molten rock, igniting everything as it leapt away until she cast aguamenti on it. The rest had simply been blown apart when fed a drop of the modified draughts.

Her uncle's present was topped with a huge yellow bow and had a card with his handwriting on it. She opened it to find a kit of unbreakable beakers, decanters, pipes and specimen jars. Underneath them she found the most amazing magniocular, made of brass with an engraved plaque bearing her name. The lenses could do from five to five hundred thousand magnifications, meaning that with the right filters she might actually _see_ the magic compounding itself between ingredients inside a potion!

Clearing some space on her work table, Mel magically stuck her new magniocular on the flat surface and soon began observing a few common reactions between lacewing flys and bubotubers. She felt giddy just by thinking about the amount of knowledge she could uncover with this new tool.

A knock on the wall of her shack drew her attention back to the human-sized world and she took her eyes out of the magnifying Apparatus, meeting the smiling faces belonging to her friends.

"Happy birthday Simply Mel!" they chorused together.

She rinsed her hands on a towel and flung herself on both boys, hugging them tightly. "Thanks guys, you don't know how much it means to me that you remembered," she said.

They waved her off and then produced two packages wrapped in newspaper and decorated with wild flowers. She half-heartedly told them they shouldn't have bothered but was dying to open them, which she did with _gusto_ after sitting together on the ground. The presents consisted of a myriad of natural ingredients found in the forest, many had healing properties and others needed to be activated by something else for more complicated potions.

Mel thanked JP and Mike with a kiss for each, before regrettably telling them she'd better be back at home or else her aunt might find her missing.

"It's okay, Simply Mel. Tonight's the full-moon so we're busy too... Preparations 'n all."

"Yeah, the alphas didn't have enough for Wolfsbane this month so you'd be better off staying inside, alright? We don't wanna see you hurt or anything."

She thought it was sad, and frankly ridiculous, that werewolves were discriminated because of their savagery, but that savagery could be contained if they could purchase Wolfsbane potion, which they couldn't afford because they were discriminated against and couldn't get good jobs!

"Couldn't you get Wolfsbane from an independent source? Like from a good potions brewer instead of buying the ready-made bottles the ministry sells?" she asked.

"Last year Alpha Carroll did that, he got this wizard's stuff that's stronger than the government's, but I'd reckon it's still too expensive for us this month."

Nodding in resignation, Mel stood up and bid her friends goodbye and happy hunting, which the boys returned with a feral grin. She watched them leave through the woods and tidied her laboratory, extinguishing fires and casting stasis charms on the on-going preparations.

She knew Wolfsbane was _way_ beyond her understanding and brewing capabilities, but the idea of an independent source for the potion kept floating on her mind while she made her way back to the cellar. It was expensive because it required the skilled hands of a Potions Master and many hard to obtain ingredients, as well as weeks of brewing. What if the werewolves themselves could collect as many of those ingredients as possible?

Sheating her mum's wand inside her sleeve, she hid the secret tunnel's entrance and sat on the same old wooden barrel with her feet propped against the pillar. She had to bend her knees at a sharper angle than ever before and wrinkled her nose, wondering when had the cellar become so small. Mel picked her latest reading and flipped to the page marker, ready to continue laughing at Brinn Bubblin's mishaps and enjoying the exciting evil plotting of the Dark Baron.

All in all, it had been a very nice eleventh birthday.

"_Grangeeer!_"

"Bloody hell, _why_ did I have to jinx it?" she cried to the heavens, dropping her book and planting her feet on the floor. She moved a few books and boxes around to make it look like she was still living in the cellar and sat on her buffalo skin, toying with the head's horns and waiting for the door to burst open.

Slam!

"_The conniving, dirty, scarlet woman that spawned you managed to do this to me!_" her aunt screamed and pointed at her own face. Across her forehead, in angry red pimples, was written the word _bitch_ in capital letters. Mel tried really, really hard not to burst out laughing, but the red-faced ginger-haired woman sporting the best description of herself that Mel could think of was just too much.

"Stop laughing and sign this bloody parchment ... if you can write at all, ignorant squib," she added, it was too much to have to ask her for something without insulting before and after the request.

From what Mel could gather, someone had sent her something and aunt Ginevra had tried to fake her signature on the receipt, which triggered the bitch-charm. Whatever it was, she was certain her aunt would try to destroy or hide it away.

The moment she finished inking her name, however, the parchment vanished and a manilla envelope she'd seen Muggles use came flying through the door and slammed into her face. Fumbling with it and rubbing her bruised nose, Mel failed to see her aunt reaching for the envelope to tore it away from her. She never had a chance to because it burst into a fireball so bright and big that it burned white circles in her vision for at least a minute.

Mel finally managed to look at her surroundings and, besides the charred beams and a few scorched things in the cellar, the only other casualty was Ginevra's formerly long and shiny hair.

"Say _one_ word and I'll rip your guts and feed them to you," she hissed and slapped her harshly across the face, foaming spit dripping from one corner of her mouth. Aunt Ginevra turned and locked the cellar again, the familiar sound of a colloportus spell blocking her access to the house.

"Burnt hair smells bloody awful," Mel said and waved a hand in front of her face. She looked down at the floor and noticed something shining under the ashes of her delivery. Bending over, she blew some ash away and discovered a teaspoon adorned with a crest on the handle. Turning it over with an old quill, she found an engraved pair of words: Lagrange aeternus.

"Mum," she whispered and grabbed the teaspoon. When she touched it, a strong feeling of being hooked by her navel and being pulled gripped her, and the world spun away in a maelstrom of colour.

Spinning away, she suddenly felt solid ground and the force pulling her stopped. She tripped on her own feet and rolled away to land against solid wood, in a poorly-lit room of some kind. Looking around her, she found two small panelled windows with a door in between leading to a street and a wooden counter on her back, which she used to steady herself and try to make world stand still.

"Welcome Miss Weasley," greeted a voice from above and behind her.

Mel spun around and jerked her wrist to produce her mother's wand, pointing it at an old man with a tuft of white hair and hollow, silvery eyes.

"Ah, yes... Vine wood with dragon heartstring core, ten inches and three-quarters long. Beautiful name, your mother had... Alas, I am a wandsmith and this is my shop. Name's Ollivander and I'll be at your service today, Miss Weasley," the strange man said, his eyes never leaving her own.

"Call me Mel, I don't really care for either family name though most of my relatives use Granger," she replied, looking around for an exit and possible threats while keeping her wand pointed at Ollivander. "Now what am I doin' here?"

"It is your eleventh birthday today, is it not?" the old man asked, "Someone very powerful and wise incanted one too many rituals and spells that have resulted in you being here. Imagine my surprise when an ordinary wand box compelled me to open it and I found a binding contract of service and silence for a ... respectable sum of galleons."

"Someone who'd like you to sell _me_ a wand and keep it quiet, I gather?"

"Wise deduction, Miss ... Granger," the man said with a frightening grin, "Please allow me to measure you, then."

Ollivander then proceeded to measure the length of her pinky nail, the width of her nostrils, how many inches there were between her heels in a relaxed standing position, and even asked her to open her mouth and measured her upper right canine tooth.

Wrinkling her nose at the process, she watched the old man disappear behind towering shelves filled with narrow boxes and rummage around. Mel hopped on the counter and bent forward to see where Ollivander was and saw him pulling half a dozen wands before turning back.

"I hope whoever went through all this trouble paid you enough for any wand I might choose?" she asked him before accepting the first box.

"Worry not, young lady. Besides, it's the wand that chooses the witch, not the other way around," Ollivander said and the room suddenly dropped a few degrees in temperature.

"Creepy bugger," she thought and took half a step back. Opening the first box, she found a glossy rosewood wand, about a foot in length, which she used to cast a levitation spell at a heavy wooden chair on the corner but it barely moved.

"Are you certain you know how to cast a spell?" Ollivander asked, clearly amused, "Witches your age cannot cast any--"

He stopped speaking when Mel switched wands and, using her mum's, made the chair float around and dropped it neatly on the other corner of the shop. "You were saying?"

"Very well, try this one please," the miffed wandmaker instructed, scowling at her.

Boom!

"Oh shite! I'm sorry, so sorry!" she said, blanching at the cabbage-sized hole she left on the counter after waving a wand made from holy.

"_No_ unicorn hairs for you," Ollivander told her and fetched another set of wands.

Twenty minutes later Mel was pissed with the situation. She'd tried at least two dozen wands and if they didn't explode anything in the shop, they'd simply be too incompatible to channel her magic.

"Isn't this taking too damn long? I mean, you must have more customers to care for, right?"

"On the contrary Miss Granger. I haven't been able to open any doors or windows at all today... Or dissaparate either, for that matter. The result of yet another of your mother's rituals, I'm afraid."

"Bloody hell, she locked the man inside his own bloody shop!" she thought and whistled in appreciation. Ollivander wandered back into the bowels of his shop and she could hear him mumbling something and moving lots of boxes around, before saying "aha!" with a triumphant voice.

"Seven wands my ancestor turned from a lightning-struck proud ash of the north. Only one survived the dragon's breath that attacked this very shop we now stand in," he told her and presented the eleven inches long wand to her. "This one, has a silver phoenix feather core."

She observed the wand, it had a glossy polish and was decorated with intricate flowing lines that made it look almost organic, the surface giving the impression of constant motion. Most striking was the fact that one side was completely blackened, as if the wood itself had been transfigured, while the other had the natural shade and grain of the ash tree.

Mel ran a finger over its length, then grabbed it firmly and, unlike some of the others, it didn't explode anything right away. She waved it above her head and down to the floor, willing her magic without a definitive intent, and a shower of bright golden sparks erupted from its tip. With a wicked grin, she aimed at the already maimed but still standing grandfather clock on the opposite wall and whispered a blasting hex.

Boom!

After the dust settled and the metal coils and sprockets stopped rolling, they found another cabbage-sized hole, on the wall this time. The gaping hole was easily fixed by Ollivander, but the obliterated clock was stubbornly resistant to any form of repairing spells he tried. He frowned at Mel but she simply clasped her hands behind her back, bounced on the balls of her feet and put a sheepish look on her face, never letting go of her new wand.

"It seems our dealings have concluded then, Miss Granger. As part of the contract, I'm required to cast a reversal portkey on the same item that brought you here in the first place," he said and summoned the fancy teaspoon, waving his ancient looking wand over it. The teaspoon glowed and shook for a second, and then Ollivander handed her the ash and phoenix wand's box and a pair of wand-care kits. He told her to touch the portkey whenever she was ready to leave and walked back into the shadows, among the hundreds of wands waiting for their wizards to come.

Mel's last image of the old wandsmith was that of a man scared of uncertainty.

* * *

The twenty-fourth of July was the traditional Hogwarts Letter Day. Magical families with eleven year old children, or with children turning eleven before or on the thirty-first of August all over Britain waited anxiously for an owl bearing the acceptance document that would grant their children the opportunity to receive the finest magical education in the world. It also proved that their young boy or girl wasn't a squib, but a true wizard or witch.

Naturally, as it happened every year, some rather unaware families would receive the shock of their lives with the first-contact experience of meeting a mail owl delivering parchment letters. Of those non-magical folk, or Muggles as they were known on the other side of the artificial divide, one eleven year old happened to live in the hamlet of Bardle.

Mel had forgotten all about her Hogwarts letter and was spending the Summer day with Mike and JP. They'd Accioed three ice-cream buckets and spoons from a local Muggle shop and sat on a bench facing the road, with her squeezed in between the two boys.

"I _love_ pistachio. Muggles have the best flavours," Mel commented between mouthfuls of her precious frozen delicacy.

JP raised an eyebrow at her, "I'd never know, haven't tried one o' them Muggles before, you see?"

Slapping him on the arm for the pitiful joke, Mel continued to enjoy her green bucketful of bliss. She was observing a young mother they knew was called Anna carrying her baby, and Mel wondered if her dead evil mother had done something similar once or twice. She didn't know; truth was she still refused to open her mum's bean bag even after the amazing arrangements she'd made for her eleventh birthday.

An elbow in the ribs from Mike brought her attention to him, and he pointed a finger at a pair of owls that were approaching from the north. One of them dove straight for them, but the other alighted itself on the roof of the house behind them, and then flapped its wings to land on the first open window to the left, on the second floor.

The first owl dropped the heavy envelope on Mel's lap and flew away. She picked it up and sighed, looking left and right before folding it and putting it in her back pocket.

"Ain't you gonna open it?"

"What for," she answered, "I can't afford it. My uncle might but my aunt won't let him pay for me to go to Hogwarts... I wonder who's the witch or wizard that lives up there, though."

The three friends turned their faces up and saw the second owl leaving, its feet relieved of their delivery. They hoped to hear or see something but the only motion was that of a curtain being blown in and out by the wind. A minute later, however, the door of the house burst open and a young boy with impossibly white hair and the palest creamy skin she'd ever seen put on a Liverpool F.C. cap on his head and run across the street and into the hamlet's only pub.

"Holy shite, was that a vampire?"

That comment earned a whack in the head from both JP and Mel. "Don't be silly, it's the middle of the day. Ever seen a vampire crossing the road at noon?" she asked.

Mike shrugged and rubbed the back of his head before gulping the last of his chocolate brandy truffle ice-cream. While that was his favourite, JP preferred one called Kentucky cocktail, which tasted suspiciously like firewhiskey, except for the burning tongue, throat and lungs thing.

Four or five minutes later, the non-vampire boy exited the pub and sat under the shadow, legs crossed against the wall. He was fidgeting with his Hogwarts letter and reading it back and forth, once and again. Mel found it extremely annoying to watch. Yet, she couldn't tear her eyes away from the scene.

"Oi, whitey! Yeah, you there!"

Whack!

"Mike don't be rude to the poor kid!" Mel berated and whacked him again to make her point. She gestured at the boy to stay where he was, and pulled her friends along and across the road.

The boy was actually scared, she noticed because the werewolves' nostrils flared and their grins turned slightly feral. Ignoring them for the time being, she bent forward and extended an arm, introducing herself and her companions. "I'm Mel, this is JP and this is Mike," she said, indicating each of them.

"I-I'm Lewis, Lewis P-Porpington," the boy replied.

"Hi Poportingpon, nice meeting yeh."

"Alright, enough!" Mel said and grabbed the boys by their ears, twisting them and bringing their faces an inch from hers. "Be nice and play nice," she hissed and released them. The werewolf cousins whined and rubbed their ears, falling half a step behind Mel. She was quickly becoming their alpha and she knew it.

"Sorry 'bout that Lewis. I see you've got an interesting letter there?"

Lewis got even more scared and his adrenaline levels were agitating the wolves, but Mel knew they'd restrain themselves. "What d-do you mean?"

"It's from a place called Hogwarts, isn't it?" she insisted, and then showed him her own, "I got one too."

"So it's real? I mean this is real, like really real?"

"Yeah, it's like really real alright... Do you have a parent or some adult that takes care of you?"

"Yes, mum works here at the pub, and dad's got a job at the Fleischer's farm. I showed it to my mum and she sent me back home. I don't think she believed me..."

"Can I read your letter then? Then maybe later we'll be able to prove your mum that this is really real," she said and winked at him. Mike and JP rolled their eyes but she pretended she hadn't noticed. Lewis traded his acceptance letter with hers and the standing boys and girl began scanning the parchment.

"Oi, check that out, the Muggles get free monies for Hogwarts if they can't pay for it! That ain't fair, innit?"

"More like indoctrination money. It's tied to the loss of parental guardianship and they don't have any rights under magical law until they turn seventeen. The Ministry for Magic acts as their guardian and controls everything they do," explained Mel once she finished reading. She also noticed that Muggleborn wizards and witches attending Hogwarts were required to renounce Muggle citizenship and that their records were magically erased once they signed for school.

"I'm not so sure it'd be a good thing going to Hogwarts after reading all this shite, Lewis." Mel was biting her lower lip and started to pace in front of the pub, the first tendrils of an idea beginning to take hold inside her mind. "You've got a week before answering yes or no. We three are magical and can show you that magic's real, but we can't do too much of it here in town 'cause we're underage."

"What happens if I don't go to this Hogwarts School?

"Then we'll teach you magic ourselves!"

"_What?!_" chorused Mike and JP.

"I've got a whole set of course books for all seven years. Sure they're like twenty years old but I reckon they're still good," she said.

"That's nuts, Simply Mel! I mean it's alright to cast a couple blasting hexes or whatever in the forest, but casting hundreds o' spells a day's gonna draw the ministry to us!"

Mel stopped pacing and her shoulders dropped, "You're right, they'd notice that huge magical activity in the middle of a freakin' forest and send a pack of Aurors the very same day... Bloody ministry."

"Got that right. But it'd be alright to show Porpington here some simple stuff, aye?"

Young Lewis watched in awe as a floating parchment zoomed in front of his face, but Mel wouldn't risk more than a simple short-lived Leviosa spell after two potential Hogwarts pupils were registered in the hamlet. The pale boy was actually bouncing with excitement after hearing about accidental magic, and confessed he'd once turned water into ice when he was falling into a pond and didn't know how to swim. It had happened the middle of the Summer and he'd slid on the solid surface face first, dusted himself and ran away scared to death.

After a few minutes of conversation about magic and why neither Mel nor her friends could got to Hogwarts, Lewis informed them of his albinism, which was the name given to his condition, although a broad amount of different symptoms and causes created different forms of it. His was milder in that it didn't affect his vision so much as his skin and hair, which were pearly white overall.

"Bugger, I thought you'd be like a day-walkin' vampire or somethin' like Mike thought," JP commented and earned a slap and a round of chuckles.

They parted company with the promise of meeting again after the weekend and walked back into the forest, where Mel hugged her boys and left for her laboratory shack to spend a few happy minutes prior to making her way back through the tunnel into her cellar.

"What if uncle Harry stands up for me?" she wondered, allowing a tiny flicker of hope to shine. She wouldn't begrudge him for not going to Hogwarts, she loved him and understood that somehow, for some unknown reason, her uncle's life was that of his wife and children. Uncle Harry lived and died for them, and always did as they told him as well.

Also, Mel understood why her aunt hated her so much, and she wouldn't be learning magic in the best magical school in the world because of who she was and what her evil mum had done so many years ago. Still, everything was so confusing, there seemed to be multiple versions of her past and each member of her family would choose to believe one or another or neither!

Uncle George said her father had done something shameful; uncle Harry would swear an oath on his magic, what little he had left, that Death Eaters were responsible for her mother's death. Aunt Ginevra knew the truth that Hermione Granger had been a dark witch, and yet her dead mother had successfully plotted to offer her the real truth in a letter only she could find, warning her against every single Weasley and everyone around her.

Perhaps it was time for her to open that bean bag.

She threw the crumpled Hogwarts letter over her work desk and moved a few boxes, finding the trunk she needed. Opening its latches, she lifted the lid and pulled the bag, returning to her desk. A gold knife she used for certain preparations would serve its purpose and she sliced the tip of her finger, dropping the blood into the small bean bag, uttering "Lagrange aeternus" as her mother's letter instructed.

The object shuddered a little and a puff of blue smoke erupted from it, swirling around and expanding out to encircle her before dissipating slowly into nothingness. She reached into the bag and found a thick blue book; the journal of Hermione Granger.

Inside the cover, Mel found a loose sheet of parchment and began to read.

_Beloved daughter,_

_Thank you for trusting my word on parchment. The journal you hold in your hands was started the day I decided to stay on this earth and this body, when all artificial bindings placed upon me fell loose._

_When you used our shared blood to unlock the truth of our lives, a cleansing mist removed all magical bindings, harnesses and traces from you, in the same way my momentary death did it for me. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do to release you from any oaths or vows you may have willingly made in your past, for those are both true and untainted._

_Because you share Weasley blood, it's unlikely that any magical slavery methods have been applied to you. They wouldn't work from Weasley to Weasley, likewise they wouldn't work from Granger to Granger. There are, however, worse forms of slavery in the shape of physical and verbal cruelty to a child. I wish with all my might that you've been spared from them all._

_Any form of memory modification you may have been subjected to is now weakened, please learn to meditate properly in order to recover the truth. You will find the necessary information within these pages._

_If you are currently attending Hogwarts, please leave immediately. You will learn true magicks as I have in the past three years, drinking the knowledge that our common Muggle and wizard ancestors crafted out of nature, instead of the indoctrination the Ministry for Magic passes for magical education. You will need traditional magic as well, which you will learn from a unique syllabus I've prepared exclusively for you. Your education will be free from the constraints and prejudices of the present magical society._

_Juliette, again I beg your forgiveness for allowing you to be tainted by your father's blood and for leaving you alone to fend for yourself. I love you and I'm doing everything in my power to protect you while rescuing Harry, but I can only pretend to be under their enchantments for so long._

_I fear the day an enraged Weasley or a Ministry assassin walks through our wards and takes you away from me. Your first birthday is four days from now, and we'll celebrate together as if there's no tomorrow. There may be no tomorrow._

_Please forgive your uncle Harry for whatever wrong he's done to you. His mind was weak and easy prey for those who wished him harm and for those who wished to control him. I've failed to free him because it's impossible to brew the standard counter to magical slavery without ancestral family blood. All Potters are dead, and his children are tainted with the master blood of the Weasleys._

_Because I know you've inherited my intelligence, you're now wondering how can I be free to pretend being a Weasley slave, if I have no Weasley blood. The answer is, I bound my blood to that of Ronald, your father to be. The ritual took two days to complete, and all details are inside my journal. Through this artificial bond, any slavery potion, charm and spell where the master is a Weasley will continue to fail._

_Practice your meditation and learn the art of Occlumency. While your father can never hope to learn how to read minds, he might hire someone to do it for him. Remember, trust no one around you and learn as much as you can. Then, if your heart tells you to, please help my beloved Harry and reclaim your ancestral name. My greatest wish is for you to be free._

_All my love,_

_Mummy_

By the time Mel had finished the letter, she was shaking like a leaf. Was any of this true? Had her dad enslaved her mum like this? Was he in Azkaban for this or did he actually kill her like she feared? If it was true, then uncle Harry had been under aunt Ginevra's control for over twenty years, and from what little she'd read on the magical damage compulsion potions create, no wonder the man was almost a squib!

"In fact, he shouldn't even be able to argue _anything_ with his wife," she considered, and concluded it was a clear sign of him fighting the slavery potions. If all of this was true, of course.

Without time to waste, Mel sat to read her mum's big blue book and draw her own conclusions.

* * *

The thorough, endless, annoying and frankly already getting old taunts Jimmy and Frida had thrown at her whenever she was out of the cellar, because uncle Harry was home of course, had been mercifully over once September the first arrived. She'd decided to follow her mother's advice and stay out of Hogwarts, and the Potter brothers had a feast by calling her a squib who didn't even get a letter.

Mel had yet to reveal that not only was she a full-fledged witch, but also that she carried two wands and could actually blast the crap out of any Potter in a duel any day of the week. She knew she could, she'd seen them duelling in the yard.

She'd been reading her mother's life for the past month. Brilliant was too simple an adjective to call her mum, Hermione Granger had been the most talented witch in all of Britain, and done all her work under the Weasleys' nose! She fought too many battles at once, however, and Mel knew that was her undoing.

There were loose parchments before the actual journal, a kind of introduction Hermione had prepared and updated every week until her death. The first thing her mother taught her was how to reveal tampered food and liquids, how to detect master-slave bindings like the ones between house-elves and a magical family, and how to cast a mild compulsion so that she had proof the revealing spells were real. Mel had made JP stand on all fours and scratch his belly with his left foot for an entire afternoon after learning that.

The second and most striking thing her mum had prepared for her was an actual pensieve and dozens of duplicated memories inside the deceivingly small bean bag. She taught her how to recognize a modified memory and instructed how to create one herself, so that she could actually _see_ the difference.

That's how Mel learned what a murdering bastard her father was.

She had thought it strange that her mum's first letter said she'd held her inside her body for _eight_ months, when normal gestation lasts nine months for humans. Mel was born one month earlier thanks to her dear father.

When she saw a memory labelled April fourteenth, 2004, she'd smiled thinking that she would see her own birth, but instead she'd watched in horror how a tall red-haired man punched and pushed her mum through a window and, not content with leaving her bloodied in the face and hands, had begun to kick her belly again and again until uncle Harry, then younger and more powerful, had mashed him into a bloody pulp with his bare hands.

There were worse beatings, however. Once Hermione had flung a bottle of firewhiskey at Ronald's head, who wanted to force her into having sex in a ... very rough way, and she suffered for it. Mel had already found and read a couple of Muggle books about sexuality and human procreation her mother's journal recommended, and they explained a lot of the things her friends Mike and JP would sometimes hint or make jokes about. She knew this was the memory of a rape.

Mel had cried when she saw her father, the raping bastard, cast the binding charm on Hermione, forcing her to choose between blowing her cover or playing the slave for uncle Harry's sake. Her mum had chosen the latter, and still gotten a beating so thorough that only her grandmother Molly Weasley had managed to stabilize and heal her.

For every memory there was a corresponding entry in the big blue book, and she saw several happy memories from her mum's time in Hogwarts, when she fell in love with uncle Harry and he'd fallen for her. There were many of her as a baby as well, touching and tender moments as well as funny events like when she discovered mud for the first time; there'd never been a happier baby in the world.

Mel saw a modified memory set in Hermione's fifth year, it was something that happened inside a classroom but was obscured; a copy of the same memory extracted after her mother had her instantaneous death and resurrection revealed aunt Ginevra and her father spiking food and drinks. The obliviator had been a plump witch wearing white robes and healer cap on her head.

Hermione's big blue book said that healer's name was Pomona Pomfrey and that she'd initiated the memory and personality modification process on uncle Harry and on her mother under Molly's orders. According to her mum's journal, the Weasley matriarch had some very big leverage over the healer, something that would've thrown her in Azkaban.

Despite the physical abuse, Hermione had dedicated her time to perfecting an alternative potion and ritual to release Harry's bindings as well as writing weekly attacks on the Ministry of Magic and its policies regarding magical creatures and their treatment of Muggles and Muggleborn witches and wizards. One of her entries even rebated the article from the Daily Prophet that aunt Ginevra had given Mel for her previous birthday.

Mel felt ashamed for believing the crap they'd written about her mum. She still believed Hermione had an evil streak in her, though.

According to the journal, the Weasleys had tried to modify her behaviour but Hermione could keep pretending to be Ronald's slave and still be an activist as long as her actions didn't directly affect the family. That was one of the particularities of these master-slave bindings.

Besides, her mum had written, whenever she slipped they'd always think the batch Molly had brewed was slightly off and wouldn't dwell on it for too long.

The Big Blue Book had taught her how to cast a simple surface ward to mask any and all magical activity on it, which allowed Mike, JP and Mel to start studying Hermione's own brand of Hogwarts education while inside the fifty yard circular area. Mel would've liked to have taught Lewis, but unfortunately his family had been visited by a Hogwarts professor and the Porpingtons had been convinced to send him away. The professor got to them when he showed them that their heritage spanned five hundred years of wizarding history, and that the very ghost of Gryffindor was a Porpington.

The sheer amount of Hermione's modified or brand new spells that defied the standard catalogue approved by the Ministry for Magic was actually dwarfed by the Pangaean Magick her mother had unearthed. It had taken Mel and her friends a full week to understand the very definition of it, and it required extensive use of meditation and reorganization of the way their minds worked while casting a spell.

Every once in a while, her mum would reiterate her love debt to uncle Harry. At first Mel wouldn't understand it, but after reviewing her memories and reading her written thoughts, she began to come to terms with the fact that Hermione Granger and Harry Potter had been robbed of their past, present and future love for each other, and wouldn't have rested until she'd gotten it back.

In fact, Mel began to believe that there'd be no greater revenge than to release uncle Harry from the Weasley Bitch's clutches, show him how they killed the girl he'd once fallen in love with, and then sit back to watch the House of Potter burn down.

"We gonna try those transmogrifying spells again, Simply Mel?"

The question interrupted Mel's thoughts and she paused, bit her lip and shook her head, "Not yet Mike. I'm not ready for that... You and JP can try today by I won't. My arm's still kinda feeling weird since yesterday."

Transmogrifying, unlike transfiguring, was the act of pulling magic from around you and using it to effect a transformation. For example, the Big Blue Book instructed the wizard to use the water in a stream to pull magic from it and use it transform itself into water. The incantations and wand movements depended on the base element of what they wanted to mimic, be it fire, water, earth or air.

Problem was, the wizard had to become one with the element first, and it required _lots_ of intent and strength to pull the natural magic and bend it to one's will.

When Mel had finally felt ready to do it, she'd stuck her arm into the water and cast the required incantation. Her arm had began to liquefy and her sense of self shifted, suddenly she could feel one with the pond, and actually sense the slimy toads and slippery fish rushing through her. She freaked out and botched her concentration, resulting in the current weird feeling. She _hated_ toads, but wasn't about to loose face in front of her werewolves by telling them that, so she came up the lame excuse that her arm was bothering her.

"Did you ask Alpha Carroll where the potion brewer lives?" Mel suddenly asked while they worked on mastering the sizing charm, which would be extremely useful for carrying and concealing their belongings.

"Nope, he don't know where it lives at, only that the brewer pops in, picks the money, drops the stuff 'n vanishes," JP answered, poking the largest acorn she'd ever seen. It was as wide as dining table and twice her height!

"Bollocks, we've been gathering ingredients for ages now, but how do we get in touch with the bloody brewer?"

"Dunno," Mike said and then shrugged. "Oi! What if we just follow the bloke?"

Mel bit her lip again, "We'd have to stake-out the clearing. And it'd be dangerous for me to be out of the house for too long..."

"I don't get it Mel... Why don't yeh ditch the effin' bastards?" growled JP, real concern and caring in his eyes.

Walking up to him, Mel wrapped him in a tight hug and looked up. "You know I'd rather slice my family's throats and feed 'em their tongues for lunch, except uncle Harry of course. But that'd bring me _and_ you guys lots of trouble. Besides, taking Harry Potter away from that bitch is something I _really_ wanna achieve, in honour of my mum's memory."

She smiled when JP nodded in acceptance of her choices. The strength of character and bursts of seriously powerful magic she displayed had tapped the young werewolves' instincts and made her their alpha, but she wanted to feel their human affection as well. After a silent moment holding each other, he kissed her forehead and Mel released the hug, walking to sit next to Mike and giving him a gentle ear-scratch while looking for disguising spells in the Big Blue Book.

That same evening, two walking shrubs and one rolling boulder were circling the clearing where the small werewolf community lived. The walking vegetation would stand still for a while and the unnaturally moving grey boulder would then roll ahead of it, as if scouting the forest ahead.

Disguised as inconspicuous landscape items, Mel was confident they'd be able to spot the potions brewer and then follow him. Unless he Apparated or used a portkey, they'd have a chance to speak with him and offer ingredients instead of galleons for his services.

The sun had already sunk and there was still no sign of Alpha Carroll, the wolves' leader, and no sign of any strangers either.

"D'you reckon we missed him?" the boulder asked.

With a shuffle of leaves, the shrubbery seemed to bend and sniff the air, before speaking "We've picked a new scent Mel, follow us!"

The shrubs hopped to their ... feet, and started to zig-zag into the forest, following the trail that would hopefully lead them to the brewer. After a couple hundred yards, Mel rolled to a stop and the boulder shuffled back and forth, until she saw a cloaked figure cast a switching spell at a pouch on the ground, where a basket filled with corked bottles appeared.

Never swaying from a straight path, the unknown wizard plunged into a denser part of the forest while the disguised persecutors trailed him as close as they dared. Once Mel feared they'd lost him but after a minute she distinguished the robed figure again and continued to follow, instinctively knowing her wolves were right behind her.

Reaching a small natural clearing, the figure suddenly spun and vanished from sight with a faint crack. While still disguised as a rolling boulder, Mel felt a tiny popping sound behind her and the last she heard before blacking out were two simple words.

"Pathetic... Stupefy!"

Twelve hours later, under the morning sun, a young witch stirred and groaned, "Bloody hell... Oh no, it's daytime!"

Mel groaned and tried to stand up, but was held to the ground by a tangle of arms and legs. She snickered at the way her friends were wrapped around her on either side and would've enjoyed the feelings of safety and caring for longer if she didn't need to return to her cellar immediately.

"Geroff me, you lazy berks," she laughed and shook the boys awake. They gasped and grabbed their heads, hissing in pain.

"That bloody wizard knocked us out! You alright Simply Mel?"

"We jumped to defend you Mel, but ... I'd reckon we screwed it up... Sorry..."

She told her wolves not to worry and explained her predicament. If aunt Ginevra had checked for her last night she'd be in a world of trouble; thankfully it was more likely than not that she'd invited someone over or went to a party, in which case her aunt wouldn't have bothered to look into the cellar at all until it was time to throw her some food at around ten in the morning.

With a promise of sending a flying parchment to the forest end of the tunnel leading to the Potters' house, she jumped in and crawled the narrow space. Careful not make any noise, she peeked into the cellar and relaxed upon noticing the door was still closed. She produced one of her wands and swished it at the door, revealing a magical lock around a day old or more.

"Phew... That was bloody close!" she whispered and frowned when sawdust fell on her nose, making her sneeze. Seconds later, the moaning and wall banging she'd associated with aunt Ginevra's visitors could be heard and felt around the house.

Scribing a quick "I'm fine, go home" in a piece or parchment, she waved her wand and incanted "columbanimatus" while picturing the tunnel entrance where JP and Mike were. The note folded itself like origami, creating a tiny dove that flew away through her end of the passageway. She then took possession of her customary seat to read and was about to plant her feet on the pillar when a wrinkling in her pocket alerted her to something foreign.

Patting herself, she found a note written by an unknown hand: "Follow me again and you all die" it read. Unfortunately for the Brewer, he hadn't counted on Mel Granger's tenacity. She scrunched the note inside her fist and huffed, before burning it and pacing the cellar; within the next twenty eight days she needed to craft another way to follow or track him, because she had a man to rescue, a name to reclaim and she'd be damned if he was ever going to catch her or her friends by surprise again.

* * *

Spending yet another Christmas holiday with the annoying Potter-Weasley spawn telling everyone squib jokes and hiding stones inside their snowballs was deplorable. Mirroring the murdering stares by grandmother Molly and making her flinch and turn away, however, was delicious.

But the _real_ icing in the cake for Mel was getting to aunt Ginevra's nerves by sitting next to uncle Harry at the table, making him laugh and playing with him as if he was a little kid having the best Christmas ever.

The Weasleys couldn't enslave her, and killing Mel would break uncle Harry for good, even if they blamed Death Eaters again, rendering him insane and perhaps so close to death that the bindings would fail. Or he'd simply give up and die, turning whatever little perks and status Ginevra still held in magical society totally useless. She was Harry Potter's wife after all, but who would give her the time of day for being his black widow, the woman who couldn't keep Harry Potter sane?

There was a reason Ginevra insisted in keeping Mel's uncle _happy_, and it had everything to do with her control over him. The Big Blue Book contained that knowledge, and she knew that her mother had spent years close to uncle Harry in order to keep him alive and try her many modified potions, spells and rituals on him.

For Mel, returning the untainted yet oblivious love Harry felt for her and taking revenge on the Weasleys for her mum's pain were reasons enough to make herself indispensable to them; keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, Hermione Granger had written.

From now on, it was a matter of learning and applying herself to creating new and improved counters to the slavery magic. For that end, she needed ingredients and potions expertise. And for that, she needed the Brewer.

Following the Brewer in the past three months had been dangerous and foolish. He was fast and cunning, and yet together with Mike and JP they'd managed to ambush him once into what was originally conceived by wizards as a werewolf trap, an anti-Apparition, odourless, invisible capture net that they could string over the ground.

They netted the wizard, but failed to consider the use of magically enhanced knives. The Brewer sliced through the net and blasted them twenty yards into the forest. It it weren't for Mel's quick thinking in the use of transmogrifying the hard earth into soft mud and moving the trees into the hexes' path to soften the blows, they'd become a trio of ugly rotting corpses.

"Uncle Harry, what do you know about potions?" she suddenly asked, enjoying the sounds of gasps and clattering forks coming from Ginevra and Molly Weasley.

She watched him scratch the back of his neck and frown, as if trying to remember something he hadn't recalled in a very long time. "Not much darling. I had a horrible teacher, I guess... In any case, Ginny could help you if you want to learn potions," he said with a sincere smile, but then tilted his head in question. "Shouldn't you be learning that in Hogwarts?"

"Oh, Harry," interrupted aunt Ginevra, "don't you remember she didn't even get the acceptance letter? We were all _so_ saddened to learn Granger's blood was so weak," her aunt whispered and gave her a vicious sneer behind uncle Harry's back.

"No, you're right, I must have forgotten. But I'll find a special book you would like, darling Julie. Your mother she ... yelled a lot at me for using it but since you aren't a real witch, I see no harm."

Mel had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing, the Weasleys were going to have the surprise of their lives when she succeeded and revealed herself as a real witch, not the squib they'd been convinced she was. And then, they were all going to die a horrible death.

They were celebrating alone since uncle Percival had failed to come to the Burrow with his family, and her grandmother had openly accused Mel of being the cause. She suspected the older Weasleys were aware of at least part of the truth, but like her mother before her, she didn't trust any of them. However, one day they might become useful and she kept her ears open and trained her newly acquired mental focus on every bit of information she could gather.

The meditative techniques her mum provided had helped her counter her dimwitted father's genetic contribution, and the basic Occlumency magic exercises clenched her hold on the secrets she kept, without spilling them accidentally by blurting something or falling prey to someone magically gifted in the art of reading minds, unless the wizard attacked it directly with Legilimency.

When it came time to exchange presents, she silently made her way outside the kitchen and sat on the snow, eager to return to her aunt's house and leave her cellar to meet her friends. She hoped they liked her presents, it had taken a couple of tries but she learned to tan and handle boar hide, as well as how to apply the fitting charm so it wouldn't cut the wearer's arm out or fall loose.

An hour later she was flooing back into the Potter's house and, because her uncle had to work on holidays to bring home the extra galleons Ginevra demanded, she was soon thrown into the cellar by means of a firm hold on her hair and a swift kick to the bum.

After the door was locked, she moved some stuff around and crawled through the tunnel into the forest, her head popping up through the accumulated snow. Vanishing her footsteps, she made her way to the laboratory shack to find JP and Mike already there, preparing something tasty to eat over an open fire pit.

"Happy Christmas, Simply Mel!" they chorused together as they enjoyed doing.

She skipped up to them and they shared hugs and kisses, before Mel walked into the shack to retrieve her self-made presents. "I made these for you guys," she said, handing them two wrapped items and turning her hands to the fire for warmth.

"Thanks! We got a lil' somethin' for you too," JP said and handed her a long package wrapped in newspaper, while Mike handed her a smaller rectangular one.

The three then sat on the fallen tree they used as a bench all times, looking back and forth between them and keeping their presents on their laps, untouched. Fingers twitched and eyes fluttered, each clearly waiting for the other to break down first and tear his or her present first. The fire crackled again and Mike almost lost his will, but managed to stamp the urge by sitting on his right hand.

"Bugger this!" JP yelled and tore his present open, while his cousin and Mel laughed merrily.

Each of the boys found himself a leather wand holster for their forearms, it was deep red in colour and had their names engraved on the inside. Mel had hunted a wild boar and used the hide to craft it, the hardest part was getting the leather to be flexible but strong, as well as cutting and sewing the holsters together because it had to be done manually. She'd been unable to find any charms or spells for making combat gear, only for knitting ridiculous sweaters or useless scarves.

The moment they placed the holsters on their arms, the fitting charm activated and the leather bands adjusted to be not too tight, but also firm enough to stay put under any conditions. They oohed and awed at the same time and stored their wands at once.

Mel blushed and her ears turned red at the look of pride and appreciation shining in her wolves' eyes. To distract herself, she tore open the rectangular package and found a cracked, battered wooden box. Inside, a rectangular yellow and grey coloured stone shared space with a thin metallic rod about six inches long. She lifted an eyebrow but followed Mike's silent instruction to open the other gift.

Clearing the newspaper wrappings she found a beautiful knife, it seemed to be forged all in one single piece, because the nine inch blade morphed smoothly into a handle without any visible change in material, save for a leathery band coiled around it for a secure grip. The blade itself had a single cutting edge but its point trailed up, allowing a double edge there. Closer to the handle, several sharp serrated teeth were featured and she understood the first present as a whetstone sharpening kit for her knife.

"I don't know what to say, I ... thank you, thank you!" she exclaimed and then admired the blade at an angle.

"You're welcome Mel. When me 'n Mike saw the Brewer slice that net of yours with a blade, he pointed out you'd better be havin' one too."

"What about you two?" she asked, concerned that they only had wands to defend themselves.

They smiled and produced two smaller but easily concealed flick-knives from their belts, claiming that since they've been hanging out with the wicked Lady Granger and chasing dangerous wizards to learn their evil ways, they'd better be well prepared. Mel stuck her tongue at them and returned to admiring her knife, testing the sharpening rod on one of the serrated teeth.

Minutes later the roasted turkey was ready and she grabbed an entire leg for herself, briefly wondering where in Britain could the boys have hunted down a wild turkey and how had they scraped enough money to purchase such a beautiful gift for her. "Oh well, what you don't know won't hurt you, as they say..."

* * *

Five years later, during the Summer of Mel Granger's seventeenth year of life on Earth, she had become a tall and strong woman. Her penetrating brown eyes diverted all attention from the little freckles on her nose and cheeks, while short cut, dark-red, uncontrollable hair framed her face, barely reaching the nape of her neck on the back; long hair was liable to get smeared and singed when concocting and sniffing potions. Despite the fact she could be living on her own, the uncontested belief she was a squib and thus unable to fend for herself had forced her aunt Ginevra to accept uncle Harry's wish that she should continue to live at home.

She still used the tunnel for her daily escape from the cellar, which her aunt continued to lock with a simple spell, "something beyond my understanding," as her aunt would say. Little did she know that with the magic JP, Mike and her had been studying she could become one with the house and actually command it at will. "Well, the _whole bloody house_ is a bit of a stretch right now, but I'd be able to in a few more years," she mused out loud.

Standing in front of her work table inside her laboratory shack, she flipped today's Daily Prophet open, which carried some inane front-page story about lemon drop sweets being banned from production and sale in the magical world. Her many cauldrons bubbled, fizzled and steamed around her while she browsed the newspaper, looking for anything of interest.

It seemed late January of 2021 was one of the most boring seasons in history in terms of journalistic excitement, and Mel had some better uses for the Prophet than a source of news. Sighing, she ripped it in two and, pulling a tray from under her owl's open habitat, replaced the soiled and awfully smelly paper.

Medusa the owl had a clump of grey feathers in her head as wild as Mel's own mane of frizzy hair was, and while not as civilized as magically bred and trained birds were, her people-finding skills rivalled those of any other mail bird out there. Besides, she'd fallen in love with the grey-owl the moment she saw it gutting a large snake on the roof of her laboratory, and soon bribed her into becoming her familiar with live juicy fat rats she used for potions experiments.

It was JP, the nature enthusiast, who'd later pointed out that grey-owls weren't native to these parts of the world, but she didn't dwell on it too much. "Never look a gift Hippogriff in the beak," was the saying and if Medusa had escaped some zoo or whatever, it was only fortunate she'd ended having a meal on top of her roof. She loved her familiar and the owl probably loved her back.

The only person her owl had never been able to find was the Brewer.

"That elusive little bugger," Mel mumbled and hit the work table with a closed fist. "Stirring powdered goblin hipbones clockwise destroys their rebellious attribute. Who do you take me for?" she replied on a piece of parchment and folded it, ready to be delivered three days prior to the next full moon, when the Brewer would show up to collect his ingredients and galleons. She was getting tired of the intentionally misleading suggestions and life-threatening, explosive combinations the wizard kept slipping into their monthly correspondence.

It had taken more than six failed ambushes to be able to slip a piece of parchment into the Brewer's cloak, in which she explained the need for rare ingredients and how she was willing to barter them for others she and her wolves could easily gather in the forest. The reply she'd found written on the back of her note the following month read "Seven thousand beetle eyes for seven unicorn hairs" and thus a fairly regular exchange had began.

After years of study and training, Mel was poised to be the most accomplished young potions brewer in all of Britain if she ever stepped out of the shadows. Her skills weren't sufficient for making a perfect cauldron of Wolfsbane on the first try, in fact she could still botch a full cauldron of it even if it looked perfect in the end, but her observations and experiments had given her knowledge and insight probably beyond those of the Brewer himself in a few areas.

Uncle Harry's gifts from the Umbridge Undry cauldron company were always welcome, as were free quills and office supplies he probably pilfered from his part-time desk job at the Ministry for Magic, but it was that old copy of a Hogwarts sixth-year Potions text of his that had held more than she ever expected. While her mum's copy had several instructive and noteworthy annotations, her uncle's had time-saving tips and revolutionary concepts, as well as more than one useful non-standard and downright dark spell.

What frustrated her to no end about uncle Harry, however, was the fact his bindings continued to hold.

She'd almost shouted in glee when her second variation on her mum's latest counter-potion made his eyes focus sharply upon her face, a flicker of life behind them. His body tensed and she tested him by "accidentally" pushing his teacup off the table. He grabbed it in mid-fall, before it could reach the floor.

It had all gone sour when his rage surfaced, but his memory didn't. Mel had tried to talk and reason with him, yet instead of logical replies he kept yelling at her about betrayal and murder and fake visions, accusing her of knowing nothing about Quidditch and killing someone named Dumbledore.

The episode had thankfully ended with him clutching his forehead and slumping to the floor, where he rested for a few minutes and then woke up offering Mel some tea, as if nothing had happened.

Today she was concocting a third variation, in two and half months more she'd be able to proceed with the final phase of the potion and then try again. With improved results, hopefully.

The sound of an opening door and firm steps behind her alerted to the presence of another, while the arm snaking around her waist in a distinct manner told her it was Mike. His gorgeous smell was another indicator.

"Hey Mel," he whispered and kissed her neck, caressing her stomach and pressing himself to her back.

"Hmmm... Keep doin' that, I love it," she whispered back while powdering the dried mandragora with an obsidian mortar. "Is JP back from work too?"

"Yeah, his day to cook, remember?"

Both werewolves were adults under magical law and had reluctantly registered themselves in the Ministry for Magic's Half-Breed Program, which was a source of cheap labour for wizard-owned companies, but they'd agreed with Mel's reasoning that it was the only way for them to be legally able to carry a wand.

John Paul and Michael Lobozny had become independent from their community, the fact they'd chosen to follow an alpha that was actually a non-werewolf witch had estranged them from the pack anyway. The three had built a small cottage not far from her laboratory, but it was mostly for her wolves since she was still supposed to be living in her uncle's house because of her condition as a supposed squib. Whenever aunt Ginevra was away travelling or having a night out, however, she'd be free to spend as much time as she wished with them, as was the case today.

"Lemme finish this up and I'll meet you home," she said and kissed Mike on the lips, before watching him go.

Five minutes later she was walking home, her _real home_ where people she was in love with lived. People she wanted a future with. Not for the first time she wondered what her mum would've thought of her relationship with the Lobozny cousins, a relationship that the hypocritical and conservative magical society would consider barbaric to an extreme, bordering on the immense insult of "Muggle behaviour."

A pair of strong arms holding and lifting her in the air brought Mel out of these thoughts and she found herself nose to nose with a scruffy-bearded JP. She kissed him thoroughly and demanded to be put down on the floor, complaining that he smelled of garlic.

"Are we expecting vampires for dinner tonight?" she teased.

"Ha ha, funny you," he said and kissed her again, before pulling her by the hand inside where she helped Mike set their small table.

They enjoyed dinner and she revelled on the closeness and love they shared, being able to spend long silent stretches of time together simply listening to each other's breathing or frantically debating something about the Pangaean Magick her mum had researched and they had still to understand fully.

As it happened when she could spend the night home with them, soon after finishing their ice-cream they began to kiss and caress each other. Mel took pride in giving each of her lovers equal affection, and because she knew exactly how Mike liked to be fondled, nuzzled and loved in different ways than JP did, she'd always satisfy them both fully, and be thoroughly satisfied by them in turn.

She escaped their grip and made her way to the bedroom, teasing her wolves by removing her work t-shirt and throwing it back at them. Crawling on the bed and locking her eyes to theirs, she stretched in a way that made them growl and moan at the same time, and then invited them by curling her index finger back and forth.

The Summer night was still young and she was being pleasured when an uneasy feeling made her turn to the open bedroom window. "Wait..."

"What's wrong Mel?"

"I dunno, I ... thought I saw something," she said in a whisper. "Must've been the wind, now come 'ere and make love to me..."

As the sun rose the morning after, the bedroom became bright and warm. They had chosen to build it so that the window faced the east, because it reminded JP and Mike that there was always an end to the torture of the full-moon in the shape of a golden orb.

Mel stirred first, as she was wont to do, and donned the first shirt she could find on the floor before grabbing a leftover chicken wing and munching on it. Wiping her hands clean, she padded back to the bed and took a moment to observe her family. That's what they were, her very own family.

The same uneasy feeling she'd had last night came over her suddenly and she released a scream when the window blew apart, showering her in glass and wood.

"Grab Mrs Potter's daughter and kill the beasts!" ordered an unknown voice inside the house.

"My wand! _Where the fuck's my bloody wand!_" Mel yelled hysterically from the floor while JP and Mike growled at the red-robed wizards surrounding them. She watched in horror when one of the Aurors pointed his wand at JP's chest and incanted a spell. A werewolf killing spell.

"Sagitta argentum!"

"_Nooo!_"

The silver arrow hit him dead centre in the heart and he fell back, blood pouring from his wound. Mike lost control and lunged for the murderer, throwing him against the wall and choking him with his bare hands. Mel then tried to hit one of the other four Aurors but he was quick and used her inertia to throw her to the floor, from where she watched the last vestiges of life leaving her beloved John Paul.

His eyes shone with love and he smiled one last time, before mouthing "sorry" and fading away. Mel was shaking but tried to stand up again, only to be subdued with a petrification spell.

Her very heart bled while she watched her brave Michael swinging fists with inhuman speed and strength, downing another Auror and barely flinching at a close-range Reducto to his left arm, which splintered in a nightmarish cloud of bone and flesh. Mike kicked his attacker fiercely and turned to defend a hex from behind, but there's nothing an unarmed wolf can do against a high speed silver arrow.

"No, no, please, no!" she pleaded inside her mind, blaming herself for failing her pack, for losing her family, for surviving her loved ones. The Auror had said it, she was to be taken alive. But she was dying with them, she was dead without them.

Mike fell over their shared bed, not one but three silver arrows on his chest. She saw him look at her through the corner of his eyes, and she saw his love for her, and his pride for being killed in battle, defending her to the end.

The shirt Mel was wearing had been hastily transfigured into a simple robe while she was being levitated out of the house. Her frozen body was then dropped on the ground as the beautiful cottage they had built together was burned to ashes by means of incendiary spells. The Aurors then healed one another and congratulated themselves for a job well done while she pushed the despair away, storing names and faces in her memory. These Aurors were going to die.

Three of the red-robed wizards Apparated away and two grabbed her still frozen frame, Apparating her to the last place she wanted to see right now: the pathway leading to the Potter's property. After a couple hundred yards walk, the house came into view and she saw Ginevra standing in the front door, looking back at her with a disgusting half-smile on her face, which soon disappeared to be replaced with fake concern and magically induced tears.

"By Merlin! Thank you for saving her, I can't believe those beasts were living so close to us all this time!" she cried, telling them how thankful the Potter family was for saving their poor adopted squib.

"Here's your daughter, Mrs Potter. She's safe now," the lead Auror told her aunt, "We also took the werewolves' wands and weapons, they actually had four magical wands in their possession, probably from other kidnapped young witches."

"Thank you so much Auror Croaker," she said between sobs, "did you put those beasts down?"

"Yes ma'am, there'll be no more werewolves around your property," the murderer replied and took his leave, closing the main door behind him.

Because of Mel's height, aunt Ginevra had to look up at her against the wall, where the Aurors had left her petrified body. Her aunt pocketed the four wands and threw the knives and crossbows under a table, before narrowing her eyes into slits.

"Come here you filthy spawn! Sullying yourself with those foul creatures!" aunt Ginevra yelled and dragged her by the hair, "You're your mother's daughter all right, a _whore_ just like her. Be glad I need my Harry to be happy, or else I'd told the Aurors to kill you too!"

Her aunt cancelled the petrification spell and, while slapping her back and forth, began to ask how she had left the house. "Tell me Granger, _how did you leave this house?_"

Mel was free from the spell but still frozen with grief, rage and despair. Her friends were dead, her lovers murdered in cold blood before her eyes. She should have left years ago but the love she and her mother had felt for and from uncle Harry didn't let her. He needed his darling Julie and she couldn't bear the pain of leaving him alone with the woman that killed him inside every day. It was a love debt she'd have to break now.

Dodging another round of slaps, Mel grabbed hold of a vase on a nearby table and swung her arm, smashing it into her aunt's face and throwing her back against the wall where she crumbled to the floor. She recovered the first wand she could find from inside Ginevra's clothes but was kicked back once the older witch regained her senses.

"What d'you think you're doing with a wand, stupid squib?" she asked and laughed while wiping blood from the left side of her face. "Are you gonna _poke_ me with it?"

Crouching in the doorway to the parlour, all Mel could see before her were the lovely eyes of her beloved wolves. She had a wand at hand but pain and despair had gripped her mind and she'd barely registered the fact her aunt was pointing her own wand at her, reacting only after the third syllable of the incantation was shouted.

"Expelliarmus!"

Mel narrowly avoided the disarming spell by diving behind the sofa, which exploded seconds later into a cloud of debris and floating rags after a blasting hex. She ran for cover but the wooden floor in front of her exploded as well, hitting her arms and face with a thousand splinters.

Her cries of pain were accompanied by another's gleeful laughter; aunt Ginevra seemed to be having the time of her life. "Run filthy squib, run!" she yelled and hurled a Tarantallegra spell. Mel began to flail her legs around the room until she was hit with a bone-breaking hex to her left femur.

"Ahhh! Bloody fuckin' bitch," she hissed and fell to the ground, still clutching her mum's wand.

"Such foul language, mummy would be ashamed of your mouth."

"Must be dad's little gift to me," she replied and dragged herself into the dining room, avoiding another bone-breaker that shattered the door behind her.

"Ron's a stupid moron, even _I_ pity you for being _his_ offspring..." aunt Ginevra said and walked up to her, confidently keeping her wand aloft and pointed to a side. "Now tell me, Granger whore, did you enjoy humping those rabid dogs while they lived?"

"_Damn you!_" Mel screamed and hurled an offensive blasting spell at her, which her aunt barely managed to deflect out of pure reflex, yet it bounced against the wall and the explosion hit her against the side, throwing her across the room.

Wasting a couple of seconds to cast Ferula and a mild numbing spell on her broken leg, Mel stood up and limped into the parlour, finding a wide-eyed, extremely surprised red-haired witch slumped against the wall.

"_Incendio!_"

Aunt Ginevra directed her flaming spell against Mel's face but she managed to step back and only her transfigured clothes caught fire, which she quickly doused with a wave of her mum's wand. She retaliated with a cutting hex but her aunt was too short and ducked out of the way, rolling into the small atrium and blasting the lamp above Mel's head.

The brass chandelier fell on her shoulder but she banished it in mid-flight, hitting Ginevra on the back while she tried to leave the house. She recovered fast, however, and managed to wrench the front door open and stumble away.

Mel realized her aunt wanted to Apparate away, and if she did she was going to bring a full Auror squad back. The house had solid wards extending about a hundred yards in every direction, which meant she still had time to stop her. Limping as fast as she could, Mel exited the house and aimed for the running witch.

"Stupefy," she incanted in a steady, soft voice while keeping her arm rigid and her eyes locked on her target, just like she did with the wild boars in the forest.

Sixty yards away, Ginevra fell to the ground. The spell was low powered because this wasn't Mel's wand, but it was enough to put her down and prevent her escape. Mel limped forward, intent on taking revenge for her family's murder. But first, she needed to discover who exactly had seen and recognized her out of the house. Only Weasleys knew her face and who she was, and she was going to find out which one of them was going to die first.

Grabbing her lovers' wands from inside her aunt's robe with a trembling hand, she fought the tears and reverently stored them inside the ill-fitting robes the Aurors had transfigured on her, before groping for her own two-toned wand.

"Ennervate," she whispered and jammed her wand under her right sleeve.

"How--?" the older witch stirred and asked.

"Looking for something?" Mel asked, holding Ginevra's wand with the tips of her fingers.

"_Filthy deceiving whore!_"

Slap!

Mel backhanded Ginevra again for good measure, smiling at the trickles of blood pouring from her many wounds. Having a sudden inspiration, she pocketed the wand and pulled Hermione Granger's from her robe, waving it in front of her aunt's face. "Do you recognize this?"

Ginevra's eyes widened in recognition and Mel flicked the vine wood wand to her left hand in a practised move, while at the same time jerking her arm so that her real wand fell from the sleeve and into her waiting fingers.

"Now this one ... is _my_ wand, ash and phoenix feather," explained Mel, never taking her eyes away from Ginevra's.

"You're a witch..." her aunt whispered.

"Yes, I am a witch. Much like my mother before me." She could almost smell the fear coursing through Ginevra's veins, her breathing became erratic and her face lost the characteristic redness of fury. Bringing a smirk to her lips, Mel raised her wand and prepared to cast a particularly damaging spell she'd found in uncle Harry's old textbook.

"You there! Lower your wand and stand aside!" a man commanded from the edge of the woods. A man wearing an Auror's red cloak.

"_Sectumsempra!_" she cast and waved her second wand at the wizard standing next to the Auror, hurling a blasting hex that destroyed his knee and split his leg in two.

A series of disarming hexes and bludgeoning spells were thrown at her, she dodged and erected a strong shield but one ethereal bludger hit her in the ribs. Rolling again and casting a second shield, she breathed again and stood up, assessing the situation.

Only three out of five Aurors remained standing and one was franticly trying to close the slashing wounds from her curse on the screaming wizard. They were still inside the wards because the Auror to Mel's right spun around but couldn't Apparate, and she took the chance to down him with a powerful bone-breaker to the skull.

"Disarm her! Disarm her befo-- _Ahhh!_"

The yelling Auror never finished his orders because Mel threw a double impaling curse at him, the conjured wooden lances ripping his chest and internal organs before vanishing into nothingness. She then deflected a couple of weak stupefying spells and, after hurling some bludgeoning hexes of her own, cornered the remaining pair of wizards against a copse of trees.

Mel bit her lip and her eyes darkened in anticipation.

Clearing her mind, she cast the ancient elemental spell and plunged her hand into the hard soil as if it were liquid. Her senses shifted and she focused on the sap flowing through her branches and the wind caressing her leaves. Mel was one with the trees and the trees hugged the terrified Aurors; with a little squeeze, bones began to break and flesh began to tear, until their magical yet still human bodies failed and they died amidst horrifying screams.

Her leg was killing her and she had more than a few broken ribs. However Mel pushed the pain into a corner and focused on searching for Ginevra. She felt her running back into the house, stepping on her blades of grass and pressing over her bare earth, and with a surge of magic willed the ground in front of her aunt to crack and rise, forming a wall before her.

"I'm not done with you, _bitch!_" Mel wheezed and wrenched her hand from the ground, fighting for air and trying to keep her balance while walking towards her aunt.

Ginevra stumbled back and fell on her back when the wall of rock and soil stopped her, before crawling back on her elbows, trying to escape the advancing younger witch. Her face was cut and bruised from the porcelain vase Mel had hit her with, and her shoulder was now bleeding profusely, probably a stray curse from the short fight against the Aurors. The look in her eyes, however, was still defiant.

"You'll be spending the rest of your life in Azkaban next to your father, bushy-haired freak!" Ginevra spat and tried to stand up.

"I sincerely doubt it, my dear auntie Gin," said Mel with a sickly sweet tone of voice, before raising both her wands and bending slightly forward to whisper. "Run!"

She could see the fear in Ginevra's eyes again, and she revelled in it by watching her tremble, stumble back and run away. A quick bandaging spell took care of her ribs for the time being and, briefly closing her eyes, she promised vengeance for Michael and John Paul Lobozny.

Her aunt was now almost at the front door and she sprung forward into a run, hurling hexes left and right and destroying the atrium. She ducked to dodge a porcelain vase and banished a heavy brass bust representing some long-bearded wizard, before cornering her against a heavy bookcase.

"_Coward!_ You'd never beat a _real witch_ in a real duel!" her aunt screamed, looking back and forth from behind her hiding place.

A second later, Ginevra's wand clattered on the floor in front of her.

Mel then stepped out of the kitchen, ready to duel to death, but her aunt surprised her by toppling the bookcase over and throwing a couple of blasting hexes through the furniture, expelling broken wood, books and knick-knacks straight at her. She was hit in the arm and face but managed to drop on the floor and roll back into the kitchen, just in time to see Ginevra attacking from the other door leading into the dining room.

"Reducto! Confringo! Osseofractum!"

One spell grazed her left hand and Mel lost two fingers in a blast of blood and bone, dropping her mother's wand in the process. The adrenalin lessened the pain but she was still cornered while aunt Ginevra continued to cast cutting curses and bone-breakers at her. Mel cast another shield and jumped into the stairs leading to the cellar, hoping have a moment to seal her wound.

Biting her tongue to avoid screaming, she cauterized her left hand and slumped against the wooden barrel she'd become so familiarized with.

"Where are you, little Granger slut?" her aunt taunted while descending the stairs into the cellar. "You should actually thank Frida for letting me know what you were doing with those creatures, she's a _proper_ witch, not a whore like you."

Mel had the information she needed, Fredericka Potter was the shadow she'd seen last night. Frida was currently living on borrowed time. She blasted the door and ran to the other wall of the cluttered cellar, hoping to catch her unaware, but as the dust settled they stood aiming wands at each other.

Her aunt had her wand raised and began an incantation. This was the horrible woman who'd enslaved her uncle, the woman who'd destroyed her mother, the woman who'd made her life miserable. Ginevra Weasley was already dead.

"Bannicorpus!" Mel incanted and twirled her wand, finishing with a small swish upwards. Her aunt was hit and thrown against the brick wall with a thud, her wand falling off her hand.

"Now, now, don't you dare faint on me," she said and limped forward. "I wanna show you a few tricks my mum taught me..."

Ginevra groaned and tried to scurry away from the tall younger witch, but Mel cast a few whispered spells that glued her hands to the floor and her eyelids wide open. Crouching on one leg only while leaving the other extended because of her broken femur, she jabbed her half-blackened ash wand under her aunt's chin.

"You killed my family," she growled and made the tip of her wand glow.

"What family? Who'd want to have--"

Slap!

"D'you know what happens when you change a simple root in a spell? Let's take a ... water boiling charm, for example. Simple, easy to cast, even an inbred bitch like you can use it!" Mel noticed her aunt was about to speak again and grabbed her face with her mutilated hand. "If you interrupt me again, I'll cut your bloody tongue out and feed it to you."

By now the Ministry for Magic had most likely dispatched another Auror squad, either to investigate why the original Aurors hadn't reported back or to search for the source of such large concentration of spells in Harry Potter's registered property. Mel knew of this but she'd vowed to take revenge for her wolves. After this, she had to pack her belongings and her lab, save as many potions and experiments as she could, grab her owl and then vanish.

"Repeat after me: a-qua-coc-tum," she told her terrified aunt, as if teaching a small girl. "Now why don't we try switching the root for something more ... interesting, like blood?"

Mel waved her wand and, with a predatory smirk, incanted her modification. "Sanguicoctum!"

The screams of pain from the boiling blood in aunt Ginevra's veins were cut short when Mel ended the charm momentarily, seeking her wide-open eyes with her own darkened pair. She backhanded her again to prevent the woman from fainting and stood up, wincing when her broken ribs poked her internal organs.

"Did my father kill my grandparents as well as my mum?" she asked while staring down at the older witch, who refused to speak until Mel renewed the blood-boiling charm. "_Tell me!_"

"_Yes!_ Merlin be damned, yes!" her aunt screamed back, breaking into hysterics after she lifted the spell. "Harry is gonna kill you! He's mine and he'll kill you when I tell him what you've done!"

"You aren't leaving this cellar alive, bitch... Let me tell you a secret before you die, though," she said and tilted her head. "I know the truth of how you and your family enslaved Harry Potter and Hermione Granger..."

"_Liar!_ Deceiving whore, your mother was a filthy scarl--"

"Sectumsempra! Sectumsempra! _Sectumsempra!_"

The three identical curses hit aunt Ginevra before she could finish her insults, hitting her in the face and twice on her chest. The gurgling sound of an open throat mingled with the ripping of fabric and flesh and organs. The seventh-born Weasley of her generation slumped to the floor in a pool of her own fluids, her trashing and spasmodic body giving its last signs of life mere seconds later.

Leaning against the wall, Mel dropped her wand and finally let the tears fall.

* * *

Notes:

1.- From Hermione's notes:  
m.p.m. Memory and Personality Modification  
s.p. Slavery Potion  
t.c.i. Tea-Cup Incident

2.- For the purposes of this story, magical people cannot Apparate without wands.


	2. Chapter 2: Painful Changes

**Chapter 2: Painful Changes**

Flicking the edge of the cauldron with his index finger, he made it resonate with a clear tone that faded slowly, proving the quality and craftsmanship better than any measurement on parchment could. Harry Potter was happy when providing for his family, his children were great and having a big happy family was all he deserved and all he desired.

If Ginny needed more galleons at the end of the month, he'd do anything to provide her with them.

That's why he had taken this second job besides the position he held at the Ministry for Magic. Some days he had difficulty remembering what exactly it was he did there at the ministry, and tried to recall why he'd never pursued revenge on the Death Eaters that killed Hermione and framed Ron for her murder. Frowning at the hollow feeling he always got when thinking about his friends, Harry heeded that foreign voice in his head that reminded him that he should be proud of his wife for taking Juliette in, despite her being a squib.

Sometimes, however, he dreamed of Ron actually killing Hermione. It was ridiculous, of course, because the only time he'd ever seen his brother-in-law raise a hand at her was when Juliette wasn't even born yet. It had something to do with a Daily Prophet article, as usual, and although Harry failed to recall exactly what happened, he remembered hitting Ron once or twice with his fists and then taking him to St Mungo's for a broken nose. "Or was it a twisted ankle?" he mumbled.

His audience, Madama Marcellina Malatesta, current Headmistress of Scuola Rughevecchie, the Italian Institute for Magic, and Professor Bollicini their Potions Master, looked at him oddly and asked what he meant by wanting to twist their ankles. Neither party had a firm grasp of each other's native language, and although Signora Malatesta and Professor Bollicini had been forewarned of Harry Potter's slight ... eccentricities, they still couldn't get over the awe of being in the presence of the saviour of the wizarding world and simply ignored his lack of focus.

"Oh, sorry, I was ... thinking of something else. So what is it that you want from the British Ministry for Magic again?"

"Scusami, Mister Potter, but we are here for your cauldrons, nothing to do with the ministry..." said Professor Bollicini, glancing subtly at his Headmistress.

"Right. Er... So this is the thick-bottom model we have for Master Level preparations, it's got a--"

The already explained virtues of the Model 5 Zed cauldron were interrupted by a floo-call gong in the Headmistress' fireplace. The chime prompted Signora Malatesta to stand up and allow the connection while gesturing for Harry to continue his sales pitch to the Potions Master.

A face popped from the fire and identified itself as Auror Gambabreve, under request from the Foreign Consulate of Britain to retrieve Mr Harry Potter at once. He refused to disclose any information regarding why and insisted that he needed to floo in at once to deliver a missive and escort Mr Potter back. Believing the wizard was required for some emergency in his homeland, Signora Malatesta allowed the Auror to come through and he delivered a sealed parchment to Harry.

He broke the seal and unfurled it, and his face lost all colour. "No... Merlin, please no..." he said and looked back at the Auror. "Give me the portkey!"

"Sir, it's waiting for you at--"

"_Now! Gimme the fucking portkey now!_" Harry screamed, startling both Malatesta and Bollicini, who fell off his chair.

The Auror threw green powder into the fire and called for the Italian Aurors Office, dragging Harry with him at once. They disappeared in a swirl, leaving two bewildered educators and a table full of cauldrons of every conceivable size and shape behind.

A British red-robed Auror greeted him on the other side but he was cut by Harry's demand for a portkey, which he presented in the form of a cracked coffee cup. He grabbed it and disappeared again, leaving a very flustered officer behind. He'd have to request a new international portkey now.

Landing in the middle of the Auror offices, he was pulled up by more Aurors wearing their characteristic red robes and escorted without a word into the hallway, but if they expected him to follow them, Harry did the opposite. He turned towards the lifts at a run and pushed two wizards out of the way, pulling another three from inside the lift and hitting the main floor button with a closed fist.

He kicked the door sideways and ran to the Apparating area, from where he vanished with a loud crack. Seconds later, four Aurors that exited another lift Apparated away to the Potter's house, dreading the outcome of what Harry was going to find.

Again he ran, ignoring the wizards huddled over disfigured human remains along the pathway leading home. He dismissed the unnatural mound of rock and soil blocking part of his front yard and jumped over the bits and pieces of what used to be his atrium.

"_Juliette!_ Julie, where _are_ you?"

"Mr Potter! Please calm down!" said an old wizard wearing Healer robes.

"My wife! _Ginny! Where's Ginny?_"

"Have the Aurors told what--"

"Get out of the way," he told the Healer and pushed him out of his path, intending to go upstairs. He briefly took in the destruction inside. Broken furniture and spell marks all over the walls and ceiling. Blood. He stopped dead cold once he saw the bloodstains.

"Mr Potter?"

"T-the Dark Mark... I didn't see--"

"There was no Dark Mark, sir. Please come with me," the old Healer spoke and dragged Harry into the kitchen. There were burn marks everywhere.

Harry allowed himself to be guided into the cellar, and the Healer ordered the wizards inside to leave the room. They looked back at him with pity in their eyes.

"No, no, no... Not my darling, please no!" he whispered and climbed down the stairs. Harry gagged at the smell and closed his eyes, taking one last step to the floor and slowly opening his eyelids.

He wanted to deny his senses, erase the knowledge that would tell him who the bloodied and maimed person lying on the floor was. Yet Harry knew that shade of hair, that tone of skin, that style of dress. He knew who she was. "Ginny?" he whispered and fell to his knees, heaving and gasping for breath, while the Healer climbed back up, leaving him alone.

"Ginny wake up!"

Silence.

"Please! Help me! _Somebody help!_" he yelled and pulled the mangled dead body to his lap, ignoring the tell-tale stiffness of rigor mortis, the coagulated blood and sunken eyes that stated her undeniable demise.

The same old Healer came back, squatted next to him and put an arm on his shoulder. He turned and pulled the body, and the motion finished separating Ginny's torso from her lower body, releasing nauseating fluids and inoperative organs on top of his legs and all over the dirty floor. Harry froze again and his eyes widened beyond natural capacity, fixated on the gore that was once his wife.

"Merlin help us!" whispered the Healer. "Mr Potter, please. Your wife's gone. Let's get you out of here."

Harry didn't move, but he felt the old wizard pull his hand from him as if burned all of the sudden. He began to shake and the cellar shook along with him, rattling the tiny windows and making wooden crates and boxes shuffle around. He suddenly remembered there was more than one beloved living in the house.

Without a word, he dropped the carcass and stood up, climbing the stairs and searching the house. His bloodied appearance startled several other Aurors but they kept their distance. The second floor was untouched, and he pushed the door to Juliette's bedroom softly, expecting the worst.

Nothing. He searched in the other rooms, finding nothing at all. Sitting on the end of his bed, granted he only used it occasionally but he still considered it to be his bed, he removed his spectacles and was about to put them on the bedside table when Jimmy rushed in, complaining and yelling.

"Father! Those imbeciles won't tell me what's happened to mother!"

He remained silent, looking down, while Jimmy pulled on his shoulder. His son was yelling again when Frida walked through the door and, with a closed fist, hit Harry across the face. Hard and drawing blood from his lips.

"It was that _bastard_ you allowed to live here!" Frida shouted in his face, "She was consorting with dark creatures, Jimmy. I don't know how the fuck she escaped the house but the freak brought werewolves here to ... to k-kill mother!"

"What werewolves?" asked Jimmy, dragging Frida away from the bedroom in order to keep her from hitting and kicking Harry again.

Once inside his former room, he cast a silencing charm and locked the door, but Frida kept fighting. "Let go of me! It's _his_ fault she's dead! I saw Grangy last night coupling with two of them... Merlin it was _disgusting_... And now she killed mum!"

"How could that squib ever get out of the cellar?"

"I don't give a fuck to how she did it! She killed mum! Merlin, she killed mum! She killed mum..." Frida repeated and fell to the floor, sobbing and rocking back and forth.

"Get a grip, would you? Now what's this about werewolves?"

"I s-saw her, the squib freak, in a house about t-two miles from here. I'd been assigned to check on some registered half-breeds living south from this place, for Auror training, a-and then last night I found that house... Then I told mum what I saw and she reported the Grangy freak was missing!"

Jimmy was trying to understand his sister but she wasn't making much sense. "Mother found the squib to be missing and reported it?"

"No you idiot! _I_ found her out of the house and _mum_ reported that she had been kidnapped by werewolves to the Aurors, who carried out the raid, killed the half-breeds and brought her back here! B-but I was away on training and then there was an alarm of heavy magic at the house a-and ... the Auror squad they sent never returned! The squib isn't here so it must've been her who brought the beasts to kill mum!"

Back in the master bedroom, Harry continued to sit on the mattress, holding his glasses on one hand and staring at the floor. The ripples running through the coversheet and the rattle of the windows and doors testament to his lack of self-control, despite the catatonic appearance. He hadn't noticed his son and daughter come and go, nor did he notice the Auror in front of him trying to get his attention.

"Mr Potter, I really need you to stop this sir, or I'll be forced to Stupefy you!"

The magic ripples didn't cease and Harry was struck with a spell, falling sideways over the bed. Just as he was being levitated out of the bedroom, Jimmy and Frida opened the door and asked what happened. Learning of their father's lack of control and unresponsiveness gave them a sudden inspiration; they might be able to get revenge _and_ gain something from this after all.

They met the Healer downstairs, and watched as he Ennervated their father and the area around them began to vibrate. Healer Turner then tried to communicate with Harry, making him focus his eyes on him to no avail, deciding to Stupefy him again for everyone's safety. That was all the information they needed to put their newly hatched plan in motion.

"He'll be deemed incapacitated tonight, we shall ask Grandmother Molly to present the petition while we play the grief stricken son and daughter."

"Fuck you, Jimmy! You hate everyone and your own shadow too, but I loved mum... That filthy beast-loving squib is gonna die by _my_ wand."

Jimmy dismissed his sister's rant and asked who the meanest, most vicious Auror among the group of almost thirty officers wandering their house was, and then told her to be by the Healer's side at all times.

"Auror Tankard!" called Jimmy, approaching the tall wizard his sister had pointed out. "There's a small village from where the beasts that killed my mother came, to the south of these woods. I believe it would be in the interest of all civilized wizards to have it ... contained with utmost prejudice?"

The Auror smiled and quickly assembled a group of fighters, justifying his actions under the Probable Threat to Wizarkind directive. The party of thirteen disillusioned themselves and took to the air riding broomsticks, searching for the werewolf community.

Seven minutes later they spotted a clearing and seven small cottages. Descending at once, Auror Tankard directed three of his officers to conduct a registration verification while they waited by the woods. The three Aurors issued a loud blast to the air and, using a Sonorus spell, called forth the half-breeds.

"This is a registration verification by Ministry for Magic Aurors. All half-breeds are to be present in front of their dwellings immediately! We will be conducting our search within the confines of your property as well!"

Two minutes later, eight different families were assembled in a line, with their backs turned to the edge of the forest and registration parchment at hand. The Alpha of the Pack or, as was written in his license, Charles P. Carroll, was the first to present his wand and parchment. The Auror had decided to vent a little frustration first and, when checking his wand, accidentally dropped and stepped on it, snapping it in half.

"Well, beasties like you don't have much use for a wand, do you?"

"Who killed the nice lady up north?" asked the other Auror, sparing all time-consuming interrogation practices. He knew exactly how to make beasts speak.

No one in the community said a word, and most of the adults paled. They knew they were dead. When a dark creature was suspected of a crime, it had no defence. If the suspected crime was the murder of a wizard, retaliation was death.

The second Auror asked again and fingered his wand, walking in front of the line and stopping in front of a young seven or eight year old boy. "I'll ask again. Who murdered Ginevra Potter?"

"Nobody! We don't know what you're talking ab--"

"Sagitta argentum!" incanted the Auror, and the silver arrow crossed the boy's chest, flying out the other side in a shower of blood. He fell to the ground like a puppet whose strings were swiftly cut.

"No! Horace, oh Lord..."

"Shut up, beast!" commanded the third Auror, who used a Bludgeoning hex to throw the despaired mother twenty feet to the air, breaking her thorax with the initial blow and then her legs as she fell. That was enough waiting for the remaining wolves who, knowing their fate was sealed, yelled at the youngest to run while they lunged forward with wands and fists at the Aurors.

The ten hidden officers then came from behind the werewolves and began killing and hexing them on their backs. The most fortunate of them died instantly with silver arrows while the ones still alive, including Alpha Carroll, were made to watch as six Aurors rounded up the youngsters and used them as target practice while asking who had killed Mrs Potter and where they were keeping young Juliette Potter, a name no werewolf recognized at all. Twenty minutes later they torched the houses and killed the last of them, describing the operation as the result of a proactive raid in defence of wizardkind.

Taking to the skies again and returning to the Potter house, Auror Tankard and his men arrived just in time to witness James and Fredericka Potter taking a portkey with a Healer and their father Harry Potter, probably destined for St Mungo's. He wondered if the man would ever recover, since he wasn't very sane to begin with, after the whole You-Know-Who business.

Tankard's Senior Auror in Command had issued a search for Juliette Potter, who preferred to use the Granger family name according to Auror Trainee Fredericka Potter, and although initial suspicion was strong towards the werewolves they'd just eliminated, an Unspeakable team had arrived and categorically denied any such possibility. "At least those beasts won't bother anyone," he thought while walking away from the creepy Unspeakable.

Unspeakable Beta, the one wearing a silver trim, had finished conferring with the Senior Auror and used Legillimency to extract the exact condition in which Ginevra Potter's body had been found. Meanwhile, Unspeakable Theta, the one wearing copper trim, continued to puzzle over the strange mound of earth and rock, casting precise diagnostics over it before walking to the deformed trees where the dismembered Aurors met their untimely end and waving his wand at it too.

"Problems?"

"Questions."

"New?"

"Older than they should be."

Unspeakable Beta frowned, cast his own diagnostic, and frowned even more. There were residues of magic that no former Death Eater should know, and no new dark wizard could research. In fact, he believed only He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had used similarly powerful magic, but records were so scarce that he couldn't really be certain.

In any case, the Unspeakable believed that murdering the wife of Harry Potter and kidnapping his adopted daughter was enough to give this newcomer notoriety. A notoriety that would make him easy to detect and, Merlin willing, apprehend for further studies.

Truth be told, Beta wondered if he would have a chance to examine Harry Potter now that he was catatonic and restrained. He quickly made up his mind and told Theta to continue investigating while he Apparated away to London.

The atrium at St Mungo's was as busy as it always had been. The strangest and most hilarious cases of magical mishaps, Apparition splinching, unforeseen potions results and plain dumb accidents could be found there, and sometimes provide research material for the Department of Mysteries.

Walking towards a bare wall that Unspeakables used for bypassing the regular protocol, Beta waved his wand and was accepted by the defensive ward, crossed the wall and sat on a charmed Muggle wheelchair. "Magical Containment Wing" he spoke out loud and tapped one of the wheels. The vehicle sped up and zoomed along narrow passageways before tilting and rolling up the wall, the most unpleasant part of the journey for Beta, who threw half his lunch from his stomach in that manoeuvre.

The wheelchair stopped halfway up against the bare wall and he flung himself to a ledge, crossed the ward and stepped into a corridor full of identical green doors. He began opening door after door searching for the room containing Harry Potter and found himself dodging a big metal object sent his way by a permanent resident of this hospital wing, a witch who couldn't stop conjuring anvils and flinging them at everyone around her.

Fortunately he found Harry in the next door he tried, sitting on a plain bed while waves of magic rumpled the covers and rattled the room. Beta approached and pulled an old brass lamp and a glass pipette from his pocket, and began sampling magic from every surface, dropping them into the lamp and rubbing it. He took notes on every puff of smoke and walked up to Harry, who hadn't acknowledged his presence yet, casting a diagnostic and taking notes on the results.

"Interesting," he mumbled and used the pipette to collect some of his breath. He was about to collect some blood when a Healer entered the room.

"What are you--"

"Imperio," incanted Unspeakable Beta. "Follow your duties and return in an hour. Send me copies of every report on Potter each week. Go now."

The Healer turned around and left, allowing Beta continue his examination. He frowned and smirked and his eyes bulged or narrowed according to whatever puffs of smoke came out of the brass lamp and wondered about some of the readings he obtained, annoyed at the fact the Ministry had barred the Department from doing this for so many years.

Unspeakable Beta was part of the new generation. Before him all Department of Mysteries workers retained knowledge of their names and their past, but he'd been Obliviated the moment he accepted the job, eliminating his previous life. Even his Hogwarts documents had been erased as if he'd never existed. However these results were surprising and he needed help from the only active Unspeakable who was already part of the Department when You-Know-Who returned to life. Beta decided to speak with Croaker at once.

His course of action decided, Beta stored his items and exited the room, leaving Harry to himself on the bed. It was already past seven in the evening and the sound of an unlocking door made the recently admitted patient snap to attention. It was the very first physical reaction Harry had displayed since arriving at St Mungo's Hospital.

"Harry Potter?" he heard someone ask.

Harry tried to turn his head but a jolt of pain shot through his neck and cold seeped from the base of his skull towards his forehead, making him flinch and moan. He tried to assess where he was, but the pale cream walls and bare room without windows were foreign to him.

"Where am I?"

"St Mungo's Hospital, in a room within the Magical Containment Wing. You were brought here because your magic was flaring out of control. Do you ... remember _why_ you lost control?"

Squeezing his eyes, he tried to remember. He was in Italy, on Ministry for Magic business. "No, I wasn't," he concluded, an assortment of potions implements spread over a large table coming to his mind. Then an Auror had come to tell him something... "Merlin... Oh Merlin please no--"

Retching over the side of the bed, Harry gasped for air and shook his head, denying what his feeble memory was trying to bring forth. His darling Julie was missing and Ginny had been murdered in the most macabre way in their house, there'd been blood all over her. So much blood.

"My children... Where are they? Juliette, have you found her?"

"I don't know Harry-- I mean Mr Potter. Scourgify!" the Healer incanted and cleaned the mess he'd made.

Harry looked up at the wizard for the first time and briefly recognized a face, from long ago. The stern pale-blue eyes and receding brown hairline combined with a crooked jaw linked him to a name, and he whispered it aloud. "Treeleaf? Terrence Treeleaf?"

Healer Treeleaf had been his Mind Fixer almost two decades ago, when Harry had fallen into what Hermione had termed a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, although Ginny and Ron had laughed at her for trying to give Muggle names to a simple bout of shyness. He remembered how her friend had scheduled secret sessions with Treeleaf at St Mungo's until his fifth session was discovered and made front news in the Daily Prophet. His then future wife together with his future mother-in-law had demanded him to stop such foolishness at once.

"I'm amazed you're able to remember, Harry. And relieved as well; I only wish this reunion had been under less ... harrowing circumstances."

"She's gone... I tried to help her stand up but ... her body, it ... came a-apart! Oh Merlin and all Gods, she's dead! She's dead..." Harry repeated and curled on the bed, spasms rocking his body.

Terrence sighed and began casting his diagnostics, scowling at the results. His training on Mind Magic had helped him treat patients suffering from exposure to badly performed Obliviations and Unforgivable Curses to simple depressive or obsessive conduct, and although he could never claim to be a proficient potions brewer, or even a mediocre one, he'd also been able to conduct a fair amount of research on behavioural potions in the last twenty years.

It was Harry Potter himself who'd sparked his interest in such matters, after his brief but intriguing sessions with him so long ago. The Boy-Who-Lived had come to him reluctantly, spurred by the obnoxious witch criminal Hermione Granger of all people, and after three stressful two-hour sessions he had finally agreed to a diagnostic and admitted he had a "slight problem coping with the dead."

Snorting softly at that memory, Terrence noticed the waves of magic starting to flow from his patient, ripples everywhere. Eager to begin his analysis of the wizarding world's greatest hero, he produced a blade and cut the man's arm for the blood samples he needed, before sighing and walking out, closing the door softly behind him.

As he walked to the lift, he was suddenly assaulted by two young people claiming to be James and Fredericka Potter. He frowned for being interrupted in his journey to his private office, but acquiesced to answer their questions.

"Have you been assigned as the permanent Healer for our father?" asked Jimmy.

"Yes Mr Potter, I have. He will be given exclusive dedication and the best care--"

"Good, now what about his ... mental state? Is he fit to continue his duties as Head of House Potter at this moment?"

The wording of the question made Healer Treeleaf pause and consider his patient's condition. Harry was in no condition to decide whether he wanted tea or coffee, let alone carry such duties as those pertaining to the head of a family. On the other hand, he'd dealt with enough eager youngsters ready to declare their elders incapacitated to inherit power and fortune, and his word and signature on parchment could decide a man's entire future.

Sighing and wondering if perhaps his patient would be better served by being removed from any and all responsibilities, he answered negatively and was sadly unsurprised when Ms Potter presented the appropriate parchmentwork to declare her father unfit and perpetually excluded from any and all family powers and property.

By midnight, Harry James Potter was no longer a wizard but rather an incapacitated permanent resident of St Mungo's without a single knut to his name.

* * *

Midnight hour found a tall witch running through the woods. Her steps were silent and her motion fluid, as if the very trees stepped aside to let her pass, which wasn't so far from the actual truth. Mel had sifted through the rubble and retrieved her family's precious remains, encasing John Paul and Michael in matching wooden urns she magically carved out of the old fallen oak they used to sit on when enjoying their garden.

She'd also recovered her blade from under the ash and debris, which had been engulfed by fire and lost its leather band on the handle but remained otherwise intact. Everything else in their home was gone; silly paintings she'd made on canvas, figurines Mike had carved on sandstone, the tropical plants JP insisted in trying to keep alive inside the house... Everything was gone.

Mel winced from the pain in her hand and then watched her owl Medusa flying high above, faithfully following or, perhaps, actually leading her to destinations unknown. She bit her lower lip and willed the tears to stop, storing all that pain for later when she could express her rage and pursue her revenge.

Her shrunken laboratory hung from an unbreakable chain from her belt, and her mother's bean bag was now packed with everything she could pick up, leaving behind a burning shack that no Auror would be able to sift through, let alone find anything leading to her.

"I'll need a place to hide and study," she mused, listing the options available to her. "Do I stay in the area or do I go abroad? If I stay, how long 'til the bastards track me down?"

She wondered about uncle Harry and cursed Ginevra Weasley's soul to hell and back again for destroying so many lives out of selfishness. His bindings should become frail and snap after a while, a process much more painful and slower than the cleansing provided by the counter-potions made with ancestral blood, but in any event the task she inherited from her mother would fulfil itself.

"Time to reclaim my ancestral name then, like my mum wanted." Revenge is a dish best served cold, Hermione Granger had written in her planner, and her daughter decided to experience it first hand.

Mel whistled and extended her arm, waiting for Medusa to alight herself on it. Then she placed her disfigured palm on the bark of a thick beech tree, merging with it and letting their senses become one, not forcing it but asking for the tree's magic to come to her. Her hand sunk deeper into the trunk and her forearm became brown and rough like the tree's surface, and the tree began to swing back and forth to an ethereal, non-existing wind.

"Show me the path," she whispered with her eyes closed. When she opened them again, the air, the earth and everything around her was alight with colour and beauty. "Merlin's balls!"

Threads of pure ancient magick criss-crossed every leaf, every insect, every rock and every drop of water in the forest; Medusa's feathers had a glow she imagined would be very much like that of a phoenix, and slick, silk-like threads bound the owl's rapidly pulsing heart to Mel's very own. Looking down she could see thicker tendrils of light flowing through soil and dirt, a network of colours patching her feet together with the planet below. "Wow... I never get tired of watching this."

She followed a pathway of brilliant magick to the South-East with her eyes, an avenue of colour that merged with other rivers of pure energy in the distance, and she instinctively knew her destiny was somewhere over the horizon.

As she lost her concentration, however, the tree expelled her arm with a snap and the world became dreary and colourless again. She shook it and smoothed the weird feelings, having now a clear direction of where to walk. "C'mon Medusa, we're leaving these lands."

Taking advantage of the darkness, witch and owl ran down the slope and paused by the shore of a gentle stream, looking around before stepping in and crossing to the other side. "There'll be time for mourning, loves," Mel said and palmed her blade, "but first, some witches and wizards will pay..."

She startled and stopped again, looked over her shoulder and crouched, listening to the forest and trying to peer into the shadows around her. Finding nothing, she sprung to her feet and resumed running, up a ridge and over it. Strong Muggle lights of an urban area greeted her in the distance, and Mel wondered, not for the first time, why the web of magickal energy captured Muggle and wizard alike. Speaking of which, she had no Muggle money, let alone the required identity card she'd seen them use in their daily lives back in the hamlet of Bardle.

Coming up with a quick solution that hopefully wouldn't alert the Ministry Aurors, Mel walked into the residential development and let Medusa fly above while she looked for a Muggle. Because of the late hour, however, there was nobody wandering the streets except for the occasional cat, but as she turned a corner, luck smiled at her.

A tall adult woman in her thirties and a young boy, no older than herself if she could trust her senses, were making love against a hedgerow, tangled together, kissing and moaning. The woman then grabbed the boy's already exposed buttocks and pulled him closer, both crying softly in ecstasy, which gave Mel the opportunity to plunge her hand into the vegetation, merging with it and extending a branch to pull the wallet that was hanging out of the boy's lowered pants' pocket.

Mel made the wallet glide through the hedge's foliage and separated her hand from the plant, watching the couple as they continued sharing their intimacy. She felt the pang of loss in her chest, rage bubbling beneath her skin and a cry of pain made her drop to her knees. How she wanted to kill the Muggle couple because they had what she'd lost, how she wanted to destroy the love they had because she'd never experience it again.

"Why...?" she whispered and hugged herself, trying to stop the pain and save it for later. Mel needed that fuel it her veins and it would be foolish to waste it against a pair of Muggles who had nothing to do with her current situation.

But rage was a powerful emotion, clouding rationality and destroying morality in its wake. Rage robbed a young man and a beautiful woman of their lives and their love. Their bodies would be found dismembered and mutilated, bloodied human parts strewn all over a hawthorn hedge that had mysteriously grown into a wild mass of lifeless branches overnight.

* * *

Meanwhile, deep underneath London, in the expansive building that houses the Ministry for Magic, Unspeakable Omega continued to take notes on her inherited project. The experiment had been carried on for decades with various degrees of success, and she'd been assigned to the Brain Room within the Department of Mysteries the moment she became an Unspeakable.

The most rewarding part of her job, however, was the thrill of acquiring suitable material for this research, which was her current activity. Finding this witch had been difficult since Unspeakables had no lack of funding but were required to work in secret, relying on their own skills to carry on with their tasks. She remembered tracking the damnable woman through Siberia in the Winter of all seasons, and then how she eluded capture in the Amazon river delta until finally catching her in Sweden.

And here she was at last. Luna Lovegood's brain would be a fine prize to add to her collection.

In order to keep the brain from damage, Unspeakable Omega had to remove it while the wizard or witch was still conscious, something she could do magically but there was no more fulfilling way than doing it the Muggle way. Without the anaesthetics, of course. She charmed the hand-held circular saw to rotate and pulled the witch's scraggly dirty-blond hair out of the way, plunging the rotating cutter into skin and bone, feeling the almost orgasmic pleasure she always had when her experiment subjects screamed and spilled their blood all over the room.

Grinding and cutting while Ennervating the witch who could see the unseen, Omega finally reached the other side of the skull and, with an engorged spoon, scooped the brain and some of the spinal chord out. She briefly wondered about removing the eyes and decided it would be advantageous to study them as well, perhaps there was more than just her magical brain at work.

"Ennervate!" she cast again, keeping the witch alive and conscious before removing her eyeballs and finally dumping the entire sensory ensemble into the aquarium full of brains.

A flick of Omega's wand cleaned the work table and another banished the body into the Locked Room to be consumed by the Heliopaths. Yet another flick and a roll of parchment was summoned, floating on air with a quill hovering on top, ready to continue writing more notes.

"Experiment seventy-seven survived extraction and is bound by Soul Stone. Preliminary scans detect an ... unforeseen ... anomaly regarding the integrity of the subject's Gestalt."

Omega approached the glass and used her wand to shoo a few over-amorous brains away from Lovegood's, applying another diagnostic method only to discern the same results. The most basic, natural impulses of highly organized lifeforms remained but her Ego, Id and Superego were nowhere to be seen.

"While no coherent awareness of self or higher functions appears to have been preserved, basic magical energies shall be studied further," dictated Omega, pausing again to contemplate the pale blue irises of the floating eyeballs.

Had she taken a second longer to observe instead of glancing down at her pocket watch, the Unspeakable would have noticed the faint contraction of Luna's pupils before they settled in a perpetually unresponsive aperture.

Luna had been no stranger to pain, she'd survived torture before the end of Voldemort's reign of terror and had been wounded or attacked by magical plants and creatures many times in her endless journeys of discovery, but the inability to shut herself down while her skull was being cracked open had been a horrendous experience. Somehow all she could think of was how much she needed her friends, for even after all these years Luna still considered some of her former Hogwarts colleagues to be friends.

Travelling had left no room for new friendships to develop, and although she hadn't seen Neville, Harry and Ginny for so long, she still kept them close to her heart. Ronald landing in Azkaban for Hermione's murder only proved her friend's lunatic behaviour was somehow unnatural, and she'd felt the same about Harry's vacant state of mind that she detected the few times they'd been together, since Ginny always kept him away from all his former friends.

While enduring the worst of the procedure she'd been forced to suffer, Luna's soul began to feel a pull towards other realms and other souls, but it was impossible to leave her body no matter how much she tried. The pain worsened and the laughter of her torturer broke something deep inside her; the connection she felt with humankind as a whole suddenly snapped, and she renounced all ties to a species capable of such cruelty.

The realization that she was a new entity free from the corporeal and magical boundaries of a witch, free from the imprisonment of a human Soul Stone, caused her to seek refuge somewhere else, and the love she felt for old friends pulled her through the ether, seeking their comfort. Luna couldn't feel two of them, which startled her since she'd expected only Hermione's existence to be gone. Who else could've died in the past couple of years she had been abroad?

She tried to reach for a glowing presence so powerful and inviting that her feeble manifestation was dwarfed next to it, so much so that she couldn't even attract it's attention to herself and plead for her life. Another was beautiful and inviting from afar, yet as she pushed herself forward, the hidden stench of venom and hatred suppurated from it. Luna cried deeply for a friend lost to the Dark.

Almost powerless to remain in this plane, the manifestation of Luna's self reached for a last, soft and wavering entity far away. It was her third living friend, and she suffered for the state in which he or she was now in. The entity was longing for something or someone, in deep pain and confusion. It was so desperate that it immediately recognized another consciousness in need and invited her in, offering mutual support and giving Luna the gift of life, albeit in a body not of her own.

At that moment, inside an unmarked room of the Magical Containment Wing at St Mungo's, permanent resident Harry Potter, former Head of the Potter Family, stopped trembling and felt a tiny measure of comfort. Someone had began whispering sweet nothings in his mind.

"Hello Harry," the voice said. "It's going to be all right, I'll be with you now. All you have to worry about is avoiding mistletoe, because us Nargles are addicted to it, you see..."

Harry turned and tossed around on top of the bundled covers, but the shivering and uncontrolled ripples of pure magic subsided. He felt something new, a new set of emotions he didn't know he had, and a dreamy voice that kept reassuring him that everything was going to right itself.

"You're going to heal soon," whispered the friendly Nargle in his mind's ear. "I'm a good little blue Nargle and I'll be taking care of you."

He fell asleep while the voice sang a lullaby, he actually felt content and safe for some reason, and the night sped away in the blink of an eye until every inch of his body exploded in pain. The screams brought a flock of healers into the room, waving wands to vanish the corrosive, noxious gases that were bursting out of him, throwing salves over his body and pouring disgusting potions down his throat. Healer Treeleaf arrived moments later clutching the results of his blood analysis and began directing the motley crew while banging his wand on Harry's head and taking notice of the various colours that burst with every hit.

"By Merlin, didn't anyone think of stupefying or giving Potter a potion to keep him from feeling pain?"

When nobody assumed responsibility, Treeleaf continued to beat Harry's head a few more times before summoning a phial of a tar-like substance, which he chucked down the man's wide open mouth. He watched the healers prepare a skin salve to be rubbed all over the burnt tissue and helped vanish the ruined clothes, examining his patient's face and wincing involuntarily at the damage done to his corneas.

"Great Merlin! What happened here?" asked one of the healers, waving a cleaning charm on herself.

"As far as I can tell, Madame Redstone, his body is releasing a series of very potent potions. What I fail to understand is _why now_ and _how exactly_ did he ingest them for so long," answered Healer Treeleaf.

Breathing heavily, Harry moaned and gurgled in pain and was given another dose of pain numbing potion by the nearest healer, as well as bathed in a new layer of salve, front and back. His skin and probably several internal organs would have to be regrown, and only time would tell how deep the damage to his eyes was.

Treeleaf sighed and looked over his patient, wondering what to do about the poisons and illegal potions he found swimming in Harry Potter's blood. The results indicated more than three decades of continuous use, and he wondered how and when he should present the evidence to the man and help him deal with the fact he had been a slave to someone all this time.

One of the Bone and Organ Healers presented her findings and the rest winced together. Lungs scorched and barely operational, digestive system completely inoperative, his heart needed urgent repairs and would be worked on immediately.

Gathering all the information in a folder marked H. Potter, Permanent Resident, he added the indication for confidentiality of the patient's condition, a decision the hospital could make freely since the man in question had no rights until he could prove his ability to perform as an independent member of society. Regaining the headship of his family would be impossible, however, given that old families had provisions to remove any legally incapacitated members from it. He hoped the Potters were traditionally more tolerant and he could at least keep his name and help him financially.

"Soon the atrium will be flooded with journalists," Healer Redstone commented while observing the procedures.

"Unfortunately, I believe you're right. Did you read the blood analysis and the amount of basilisk venom in his veins?"

"I did. It's almost unbelievable, but this is Harry Potter we're talking about! It saddens me to see a hero under a slavery cocktail, however..."

The female healer trailed off and Treeleaf agreed silently, with a slight motion of his head. Morning light was already shining on the horizon and the vital organ regeneration should take a few more hours to complete, and then the process of regrowing and healing soft tissue would take another couple of days at least.

"I'm going to write a report and check on him in three days. If he's lucid enough by then, I can start rebuilding his mind without outside interference this time," said Treeleaf, leaving the competent squad of healers to do their work.

* * *

The Daily Prophet took one day longer than expected to get wind of the gruesome murder of Ginevra Potter and the fact Harry Potter had been committed as a permanent resident of St Mungo's. The flashing headline read "Potter Family Attacked!" in giant bold letters and a declaration by the surviving family expressed their pain at the tragedy, demanding that the perpetrators be found and executed in public square.

One of the companion articles in the newspaper proposed that a follower of the infamous Hermione Granger-Weasley had murdered Ginevra Potter seeking vengeance. Parts of the article detailed the witch's long list of illegal actions against the magical world including treason to the Magical World, assault against members of the Ministry for Magic and the use of Unforgivable Curses before her death at the hands of her husband, Ronald B. Weasley. Being a hero of the Second War against You-Know-Who, the Daily Prophet editorialized what they believed to have been "his righteous deed within the drama of having to execute his wife", despite the fact Ronald had been tried and convicted to life in Azkaban for murder.

A sentimental letter from Arthur Weasley, father-in-law of Harry Potter, was published and it showed the family's sorrow at the tragedy. Also published was a heartfelt missive written by Minister Peaglet recounting what a wonderfully exemplar family the Potters were, the epitome of British wizarding society representing all that is good in Pureblooded unions. An editorial also remarked how the family had braced themselves against the stench of Muggle ideals from the Potters' relationship with a criminal dark witch, going so far as to take care of Hermione Granger's daughter as their own, raising her as a proper Squib.

The Squib's disappearance was barely mentioned as a footnote, hidden among the many references to Harry Potter's heroism, and said Squib was all right with it.

"This is precious, Medusa! Those effin' idiots have no idea I'm a witch," Mel told her owl while holding the Daily Prophet she'd been offered by the subscription owl and scanning for any news of an investigation. The vessel she was sailing on was entirely Muggle, and she marvelled at how easy it was to fool the Continental Travel Wards merely by avoiding Portkeys and Apparition, yet a simple owl could find her anywhere. She'd have to do something about that as well.

Page eleven of the local news slipped from her mutilated hand and she cursed Ginevra Potter's name to hell again. Those missing fingers were really hindering her dexterity, and she could only imagine how hard it would be to brew the simplest of potions from now on.

"Room service," a voice and a knock on the door alerted her. "May I come in?"

Stashing the Prophet under a pillow and coaxing Medusa to hide in the closet, she looked around for any items that might prove too interesting or plainly impossible to exist for a Muggle, and then opened the door.

"Here's your ... wow ... I mean, hello," the young man dressed in the uniform of the ferry company said, looking at her up and down. "Your vegan meal is ready. Would you like some wine with it? I'm Jimmy, by the way."

Mel felt her throat constrict and reached for her lovers' remains that hung from her neck. She promised them revenge and eternal dedication, but she also had to become the powerful witch her mother wanted her to be. She needed to leave Magical Britain behind and claim her ancestry, of which very few clues were left in the form of a coat of arms and a single name: Mont Blanc. In sum, she needed to hide and learn as much Pangean Magick as she could, study the magic the all-powerful Ministry doesn't want anyone to know, and then return to kill the little Potters and the Weasley slave-masters one by one.

Jimmy reminded her of the Potter-Weasleys, Jimmy and Frida. They were going to die soon, but besides the name, it was watching the man - boy actually - in front of her licking his lips lustfully, so full of life when her beloved wolves had none, that reawakened the despair inside Mel. She stifled a cry of sorrow and closed her eyelids for a moment, instantly regretting doing it because of the memories that flashed inside her mind. She could see Mike and JP's bloodied bodies, their faces pleading forgiveness for leaving her alone. She was able to smell their charred flesh inside the completely burnt home they'd built together.

All the pain she's suffered since birth because of jealousy, and hatred, and thirst for power and fame. Her mum, Hermione, had been killed by her own father out of spite, because she'd never totally submit to her supposed betters and masters; because she believed in a better way. Because he suspected she knew what they had done to her and to uncle Harry.

Mel relived the wonderful feeling of revenge fuelling her broken body as she let Ginevra know she was a witch, and that she knew _all_ of her sins. Then shivered with delight as she recalled the blissful moment she finally killed the despicable woman, only to feel her heart shattering again because of the love she'd lost that day.

The image of the Muggle couple's limbs being torn apart and strewn about the street after her fury descended on them last night also came to the forefront of her consciousness, and suddenly, a spark of genius, an eureka moment flashed through her mind. And Mel Granger smiled.

"Yeah," Mel said as she looked away from the memories, "I'd like some wine with it. Oh, and Jimmy? Why don't you bring an extra glass?" she added and the young man hurried to comply, never noticing the dangerous glint in the First Class passenger's eyes.

A minute later Jimmy knocked again, Mel told him to enter and she closed the door softly, with him inside the room. The floating Muggle vessel was large and comfortable, one would never know it was actually floating on seawater unless one looked outside through the large, floor-to-ceiling glass walls they liked so much, and Mel could see the strength of North-Atlantic gale winds beating down, yet the vessel wouldn't tilt at all.

The rooms themselves seemed to be charmed with wards crafted to block sounds, for as soon as the door closed, nothing could be heard from the corridors or vice-versa, and she intended to test those Muggle wards to their fullest.

"I can't believe how quiet this boat is," Mel said conversationally. "Have you worked here long?"

Jimmy, busy pouring the wine, simply nodded and cleared his throat, the bottle hovering over the second stemmed glass. He smiled after Mel told him to go on and pour himself some, and his eyes darkened in lust when she removed an overcoat to reveal tight-fitting Muggle clothes that left little to the imagination. Mel had been able to use a glamour charm and imitate the three-dimensional photo on the cards the man and woman she'd killed had on them, and while the different banks she entered weren't magical, the people inside were quite accommodating and quick to arrange for the documents she claimed to have lost, and to give her a full overview of Helen Meredith Harman and Greg F. Gustavson's assets.

All the Muggles had seen were a young man and a dark-haired woman, and although they tried to keep the disguised Mel Granger from closing the accounts, stating that all she'd need abroad was to press the card against the counter for purchases, she still thought like a witch and nothing could replace the feeling of real currency in her hands and pockets.

She'd immediately purchased comfortable clothes and booked the earliest First-Class one-way ticket to Denmark, or Jutland as was the case for magical boundaries, reminding herself not to use any magic while sailing out of Britain, which also meant having to dispel her glamour charm as soon as the boat started moving.

"I've been working at North-Sea Floaters for three years now, Miss Harman. I'm on my second year of naval architecture studies as well," he said and sat across the table from the beautiful girl. He'd obviously noticed her mutilated hand, but having been raised in a port town, Jimmy had seen more than his share of fishing accidents that left sailors as young as he was with missing hands and limbs, so it didn't bother him at all.

"How ... interesting ... Jimmy. Tell me more about it," Mel said and started to eat her meal, with a bit of difficulty at first but quickly adapting to her limited grip.

While the boy in front of her began to tell his tale and openly flirt with her, she searched her painfully catalogued knowledge for the magic she could experiment on the undeserving Muggle. Turning her scattered brain into an orderly, although still somewhat confusing library of thoughts, memories and knowledge had been difficult and slow, but after many years she'd managed to build enough "mental frameworks", as her mum had called the guilt traps and pain-inducing responses that kept her focused.

"What makes you live, while others don't, Jimmy?" she asked out of the blue, using a white napkin to wipe her lips. "What makes you breathe, and dream, and love while others can't?"

Jimmy cocked his head and looked at the tall girl with dark-red hair and tiny freckles on her pretty face, suddenly realizing he was cornered by a dangerous animal instead of invited by an interested potential mate.

"Who says you can't die only to be reborn?" Mel questioned as she slowly pulled a black blade from her belt, twirling it with an expert hand under the table. The stress and despair made her delirious, and the room around her began to shine, involuntarily using Pangean Magick to see the tendrils of energy softly shimmering on the surfaces, spiralling around the leftover food on her plate, and bursting in Arithmantic fractal waves from Jimmy.

She narrowed her eyes and stood up with impressive speed, pushing the heavy table aside. "What makes you shine with magick no Muggle can see? _What gives you the right to be alive?!_"

The young man found himself pinned against the wall and whimpered, his eyes locked into the reflection of impossibly shining brown eyes on a polished blade caressing his face. Jimmy couldn't speak, his mind was telling him to scream and yell for help, but the demon holding him had defied any and all beliefs and reality he'd ever lived by. This _thing_ couldn't be real, because there's no such thing as demons!

"Heart first, the anchor of your soul," Mel whispered in his ear and plunged the blade through his chest, right between the fifth and sixth rib, below the organ she wanted. She tilted the blade and heard a satisfying cracking sound that indicated the ribs had been shattered out of the way.

Jimmy howled in pain. He'd been stabbed and his chest was being ripped open by the demon, and while a part of him dared hope this was a nightmare or that someone would burst inside the room and blow the creature's head with a well placed gunshot, he knew he was dead. Killed in the worst possible way.

Mel switched the blade to her left hand and produced her half-pure, half-blackened wand with a flick of her wrist. "Diffindo," she said and jabbed the tip of the wand upwards, cutting the sternum and then severing the second through fourth ribs with a slashing movement down. "Scream, little Jimmy, scream for my wolves!"

Blood rained on her face and clothes, and with another flick of her wand, Jimmy was flipped upside down above a bucket transfigured from the broken wine glass to hold the life-sustaining fluid. "You should've known better than to make an advance on a taken alpha," she murmured, growling from the back of her throat, panting from the overwhelming desire the make the world burn, and yet tamed by the knowledge she had much to accomplish first.

She let go after a while, and as the boy's dying body writhed on the floor, she started collecting other organs. First the tongue, then internal organs such as lungs and kidneys, remembering to carve the always useful meat conserving runes and cataloguing each and every part for further study. "Why does he shine? Well, he ain't shinin' much any more than meat at the market, but still... And how the fuck do I bring him back?" She tried to Ennervate the heart in her hand, and it tried to pump blood for a few moments until it stopped beating again.

Intrigued, she pulled the carcass towards her again. The idea of reanimated corpses was a crude, simplistic resolution to bringing movement to death, but it wasn't life, and while there were methods to becoming immortal, they always required one be alive in the first place to apply them.

"This is your own fault, y'know?" she told the tongue-less, nearly severed head staring back at her with dull eyes. "Invading their territory, leering at their mate... You'd better be feeling honoured too, Jimmy-boy! You'll be instrumental in teaching me how to bring them back. Hell, I'd be able to bring _mum_ back if this works!"

With that final consideration to a young man who would never finish his naval architecture studies, nor sail another ship in this world, Mel settled to work. A flick of her wand summoned a shrunken laboratory and another transfigured a comfortable stool for her to sit in front of the worktable. Making use of the Pangean Magick that allowed her to commune with organic and inorganic matter, Mel quickly touched the magick within herself and tried to extend her senses throughout the ship.

"C'mon," she whispered, trying to concentrate and keep her mind sane. "Or as sane as possible," she thought fleetingly. Steps, heartbeats, voices; hundreds of them, bouncing on her every wall and stepping on her every surface overwhelmed her, and she plunged her now shiny arm even deeper into the Muggle material of choice covering the walls. "Plastic, I reckon they call it... There!"

She jumped and her body trembled, making the boat itself lurch, startling the people on board. Calming herself, she adjusted to the lightning running through her body, the spark that her mother had so carefully explained as electricity in the Big Blue Book, trying to undo whatever misconceptions Mel could've been exposed to while growing up as a witch.

Extending an arm behind her, and already having trouble understanding where her body ended and the ship began, she touched an opaque monolith on the workbench, and a spark of lightning burst through her. "Ahhh!" she screamed and allowed the electricity to flow trough her. It wasn't as pure as lightning collected in the forest, but while modified and transformed by Muggle machinery, it was still raw energy she could manipulate. The monolith started to glow and pulse, and silver instruments around it began to puff and twirl at the same time as brass contraptions full of cogs and wheels started whirring and turning.

The voices and sounds had become unbearable by now, and she could actually feel the ocean under the boat and living fish swimming in it. "Fish! _Ewww!_" she exclaimed and her arm snapped out of the wall, where it had been buried deep, up to her shoulder. Mel trembled on her feet and rubbed her arm, which still had an unnatural shiny look to the skin, "I _hate_ those slippery, cold, ugly things. Barely more tolerable than toads... Ewww!"

Sighing and truly hoping the British Ministry had no rights to pursue magic done so far away from the isles, she repaired her singed clothes and, with a final shiver on account of slimy batrachians and their secret plans for world domination, sat down to work on understanding what made the Muggle function and find a way to bring him back from the dead.

By late afternoon, an overhead voice announced arrival at Aalborg port city within the hour, and recommended all travellers to visit the gift shop on the main deck. Mel couldn't care less about shopping, for she was hunched over her lab equipment using a multitude of magical instruments to experiment on the human leftovers huffing, sighing and grumbling to herself. "Sorry Jimmy, I'd say you're most thoroughly effin' dead for all time."

At that very same moment, an investigation team of the Harrogate Police Department was issuing inquiries to the main offices of different banks asking about any movements in the accounts belonging to the recently deceased Helen Harman and Gregory Gustavson, who had to be identified using DNA analysis, while somewhere underneath London another team of investigators with somewhat looser rules to follow were assembled around a large scrying mirror, divining the origin of the unexpected magic readings that were first detected by the local Jutlandish Bureau for Magical Events and relayed to their contacts in the British Ministry for Magic. One robed individual in particular, whose robe had a silver trim, looked very anxious to find its origin.

"There!" the Auror said and turned his face to look at the image rippling on the mirror's surface, frowning at the image of a large passenger transporter hovering over the waters on three very slim, articulated and razor sharp hulls. "Does anyone recognize that thing on the water?"

"It's called a ship, a vessel to carry people across the sea," Beta explained absently, wondering whether he was wasting his time and this was simply a case of accidental magic from some Mudblood brat that just happened to board a ship departing from British ports. He frowned at the Jutlanders and their lack of control over magical individuals, thinking it would've been much simpler to know what kind of spells were cast, but their ridiculous protection of the citizens' privacy prevented such scrutiny.

"Stupid Muggles," another of the Aurors snickered. "How do they expect the boat to sail without a hull or a floating charm?"

While the rest of the Aurors laughed, Beta found it amusing that the Muggle contraption _did_ continue to float and sail, despite their expectations that it wouldn't, and not a single one of the wizards noticed it. "Indoctrination from an early age does produce wonderful results," he mused silently. "I wonder if I ever dismissed Muggles like that before my induction into the Unspeakables..."

"The thing is almost at Jutland anyway. Should we leave them to deal with the issue instead?" the squad's Senior Auror proposed.

A quick compulsion charm from Beta's wand made them all agree, and he looked into the scrying surface again to concentrate on the long-range Occluded Apparition, bypassing wards and leaving without any of the wizards noticing he'd abandoned their midst at all.

Zap!

"Merlin's milky whiskers!" Beta yelled as he Apparated at the same perspective he had concentrated on when looking at the boat. Unfortunately the vessel was much larger than it looked, and the mistaken mental image he'd built of the destination made him appear about a couple of hundred feet above it. And then, since all inert physical bodies must fall, so did he. Fast.

Thinking quickly, he waved his wand in a spiral and created a wind funnel under him, hopefully strong enough to slow his fall, and then applied a transfiguration on the water surface, turning the biting cold seas into warm fudge. He fell into it reasonably softly, yet it was enough of a blow to the head as to disorient him for a moment. "Blech! Vanilla... Guess I've just found out that I _hate_ vanilla."

The vessel was moving away at great speed, yet the Unspeakable managed to focus on the higher deck and Apparate there while it was still in direct line of sight. He popped onto the polished Muggle surface, waved his arms for balance and placed a sticking charm on his boots before Scourgifying the bits of pudding from his robes, hair and face.

Casting a quick Disillusionment charm on himself, he walked down the side of the vessel and stepped into the main deck by carefully lowering himself on the handrail and jumping onto horizontal ground from it. There were Muggles everywhere, and those eye-itching lights they used so much were all shining brightly because the sun was falling below the horizon.

If he needed to interact with anyone, however, he'd have to remove the charm and he knew wizards stuck up like sore thumbs among these people. A glamour would work, but he'd still be a human among them and would surely be bothered one way or another. With a pained smirk, he decided on a course of action.

"Mimicreus Canis," Beta incanted and tapped the top of his head, shivering as the feeling of cold fluid dripped from head to toe over him, and doubling over in pain as a wave of fire rushed from his feet to the crown of his skull. He breathed deeply and looked at his hands, nodding at the paws he saw instead of fingers and palms.

The forced transfiguration of the Mimicreus spell was far different from a true transfiguration or an Animagus ability, for it wouldn't give him any of the animal's traits like better sense of smell or hearing; it simply made a wizard into something else on the outside, while still being the same wizard inside. The charm also allowed for protected transformations that nobody except the original caster could reverse, making it a very effective containment and torture tool.

Because a corgi strutting up and down the deck on two legs would raise quite a few eyebrows, even among magical folk, he quickly dropped on all fours and started wandering the ship, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Beta was sure there was some connection between the magic burst on board this outbound ship and the attack on the Potters three days ago, despite logic telling him it was simply another case of accidental magic, and at most a careless witch or wizard scaring some Muggles.

"If it wasn't for the Jutlandish Office sending an alert by owl, we'd never have noticed magic so far away from our shores," mused Beta as he barked at yet another annoying little brat trying to pet him. "The Continental Wards haven't accused any unauthorized travels or any of that ancient kind of magic either, but still..."

His wizard senses made him turn around swiftly, and he knew somewhere around him someone had used magic yet again. He looked up and weaved his way among the many Muggle legs, down an staircase and landing on a very plush corridor with doors on both sides. Close to one of the doors, two obvious wizards were talking to a dark-haired woman with a parrot on her shoulder and a single Muggle suitcase by her feet.

"Very vell, Mrs Harman. I need the veight to your vand, yes?" one of the Jutland Aurors said.

Beta frowned at the odd wand presented. It was hard to tell the kind of wood, but the uniqueness of an almost onyx-like grain on one half of it was a very striking feature. He watched from a shadowed corner as the other Auror weighed, tested and registered the wand to a Mrs Helen Harman, of British citizenry, only to mentally beat himself when he heard the explanation of the magic surge.

"Remember the Primitiven are everyvhere, yes? Cast spells for cooking, cleaning and transfiguration vhen only alone like today, aha?"

Ready to walk as far away as he could from the witch and wizards in order to cancel his forced transfiguration and Apparate without being noticed, Beta sighed and shook his head. "A visit to the former Mr Potter should cheer me up. He's so full of surprises," he thought and began planning experiments for the non-entity now residing as a permanent ward of St Mungo's. The Unspeakables had been notified at once when the Potter family Headship changed, and of the fact the previous Head had been deemed permanently incapacitated.

Twelve yards in front of him, Mel kept nodding under the glamour disguising her true self but was also silently focusing on the Pangean Magick threads. As long as she concentrated hard enough, she could commune with the partly organic fibres of the carpeted floor, and feel the heat and soundwaves hitting the metal and plastic on the walls, and sense the caress of the sea as it touched the thin multiple hulls of the ship, while still keeping enough consciousness to maintain a conversation with the Jutlandish Aurors. The whole episode with Jimmy had given her a stronger grip on the magick, creating yet another reason to continue her experiments and learning.

That's when she detected the spelled wizard walking away from them. Her mum hadn't been able to describe and identify every ripple, colour and shape of the threads, but she'd filled lots of pages in the Big Blue Book with sketches and conjectures on their meaning. That one was a powerful male, probably a wizard, she truly couldn't tell, and not even Hermione Granger had been able to understand _why_ the magick threads surrounded Muggles and magicals alike if the first couldn't make a wand spit a single spark.

"Yes Mr Loewenstaal, I'll remember to perform magic only when in the company of magical people or alone," she stated firmly.

"Good. _Velcome to Jutland!_" the Auror yelled to her face, making Mel wince and growl.

She barely managed to blink and they were gone with a double crack. Grumbling about Nordics and their mothers, she pulled her fake suitcase along, scratched the owl charmed to look like a parrot on her shoulder and joined the throngs of tourists, business people and travellers of all kinds leaving the ship.

"Stupid buggerin' magic secrecy," she mumbled and then sighed. "Then again I'm the one that blew it by using magic back there. Luckily they were Jutland Aurors instead of British ones."

Mel suddenly noticed something out of place in a corner of her field of vision. There was a tall, make it very tall woman waving at her, wearing what could only be considered a witch's robe. She sighed again and started walking in her direction.

"_Welcome to Jutland!_" the witch yelled when she stepped up to her.

"Bloody hell!" Mel said and barely managed to hold her hand steady and avoid throwing a Reducto hex at the woman's head. She'd have to aim at about two meters plus ten centimetres high, though.

"My name is Belinde, and I work for the Jutlandish Foreign Affairs Office, Department of Tourism and Immigration," she explained while bouncing on her feet, which made her look even taller.

"Right..."

"Our Auror Department communicated your arrival and we wanted to help in anyway we can," Belinde said and then produced a Muggle double-A battery from her robes. "This Portkey shall take you to Copenhagen's magical quarter. You can test the destination if you know how to cast the Terminus spell."

"Of course I _know_ the spell," Mel replied and whipped her wand at the battery, wondering if the witch even knew what it was. She saw blue smoke come up and form a small representation of Earth, where a blinking red arrow pointed to the eastern shore of a portion on land located right between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. "Thank you, uncle Harry, for those Geography lessons," she thought to herself, and felt a pang of sorrow for the man.

Mel then nodded and the tall witch squealed in glee before controlling herself, making the British escapee roll her eyes. "Hold on tight!" said Belinde as she tapped the Portkey.

The whirlwind of colour and sound faded and Mel dropped in a crouch inside a very luminous room, there was a vaulted ceiling and a glass dome above her, and carved columns created two corridors around the marble floor she had landed on. The first thing she noticed, beyond the statues placed in-between each column, was the fact that her parrot was back to being an owl, and that meant her own glamour was probably gone. "Bugger..."

"_Welcome to Jutland!_" a smiling middle-aged wizard greeted while holding an extended arm to her.

"That's it! The next one to yell that on my face is getting his effin' bollocks chopped off!" she promised herself silently and paused for a second. "Or her tits, I don't care!" Outwardly, however, she simply smiled tightly and accepted the offered hand.

She was exposed now, and although she'd be surprised if anyone could find a photograph of her in uncle Harry's house, they might still follow her and find evidence of her being in Copenhagen. Mel was looking around and taking store of every possible exit and stage advantages in a wand fight against the Aurors stationed by the main doors, when the same tall woman from the ship, Belinde, walked up to her and the balding man.

"Madame Harman?" she asked uncertainly. "Ah, I see. Glamour charms fail when entering government buildings."

Belinde was still half a head taller than Mel, and as Mel herself was quite tall, they made the average height wizard standing next to them look like a goblin. He cleared his throat and, looking up, handed her a small amount of leaflets about the city's magical quarter and its history. Also included was a list of inns to rent rooms and the places one should go to in order to procure Portkeys if the destination is unknown. A map completed the tourist package, and the wizard smiled as Mel immediately opened it.

He didn't know she was looking for the fastest Muggle route out of the city, and as far away from the nutty Jutlanders as possible.

"My name is Fafner, Deputy Head of the Leisure Department. Our Quidditch season is just starting and there are three different Game Houses you can visit simply by ordering a Portkey with your owl, or visiting an Information Centre."

Mel had perked up at the words Game House. She would need resources, more lab equipment, food and lodging, and most of all rare ingredients and hard to obtain magical artefacts for her research and learning. None of those were cheap, and stealing them would draw too much attention. She'd be an idiot to try and play in a wizarding Game House, but when it comes to Muggles, they had no defence against magical manipulations. "And I could brew some Felix Felicis and be done with it!" she concluded.

"Mr Fafner, I forgive you for annoying me, you're a bloody genius!" she said and patted the bald man on the head. "Belinde, I need an apothecary. Now!"

The tall Jutlander blonde squealed again and went to fetch some parchment from a nearby table, picking up a book and copying several addresses and names, while Mel rolled her eyes again and wondered why they gave so much attention to a simple tourist. "You don't get many people visiting these lands, do you Mr F?"

"Not from Britain, no."

"Why's that?" she asked both to herself and to the Deputy Head of Leisure.

"Your Ministry discourages its country's upstanding citizens from visiting Jutland given our progressive ideals. Of which we are most proud, Mrs Harman," the wizard stated with conviction. "Our regional neighbours to the south, however, are more aligned to British beliefs."

She knew that the man wouldn't jeopardize his country's political standing by officially bad-mouthing a neighbouring country or kingdom, and he hadn't openly criticized the British Ministry for Magic either, but his insinuation gave her much to think about. "Perhaps I'm better off around the crazy Juts. Yes, Mr F just saved his own skin, or at least I won't kill him if he stays mum 'bout me," she decided in the end.

"I have them all, Madame Harman," Belinde announced, handing Mel a parchment with categorized apothecaries according to accessibility of rarer ingredients, pricing and reliability. The aide was bouncing on her feet looking like an excited puppy while her British tourist scanned the page she'd written.

"Good enough, Belle," she said and pointed to one of the addresses with her finger, raising an eyebrow.

The eager woman understood the silent command and rushed into an office beyond the columns, returning a minute later with a piece of string in her hand. "Can I accompany you in case of language difficulties, Madame Harman?"

"That agreeable to your boss over here? I'm just a tourist but you'll spend a whole lot of time around me if you're so happy to help," Mel told Belinde, while already imagining some experiments she could perform on the blond Jutlander.

"I see no problem at all. Belinde is a... disadvantaged citizen. This being her very first assignment, she needs all the experience she can gather, yes." Fafner produced a parchment slip and jotted down a few words, twirled his wand and it puffed up into a balloon, which zoomed away at great speed. A moment later, the ballooned parchment returned with a drawstring pouch attached underneath, and the Deputy Head of Leisure handed it to Belinde.

Mel kept tapping her foot and, as the aide turned to her, she huffed and moved her arms in the universal gesture for "what are we waiting for?", prompting Belinde to hurry up and tap the Portkey. With a swooshing sound, the witches were gone from the Jutland Government office.

The British woman had left Fafner with an uneasy feeling in his gut; there was _something_ both captivating and terrifying about Mrs Harman, and it had been a very long time since he'd faced someone as interesting. He knew all about the terrible tragedy that befell Harry Potter, the man who destroyed You-Know-Who, and it didn't take a Grand Sorceror to put two runes together: she was connected to the events from three days ago somehow. "But is she an ally, or a fiend?"

Walking back to his desk, he picked an stress-relieving voodoo doll in the shape of his mother-in-law, and squeezed hard. "That man Potter was poised to become the next Dumbledore, and his earlier ideals would have brought an era of peace and prosperity for all magical beings," he mumbled and frowned. "If only he had fulfilled those expectations..."

Absently plucking a ballooned parchment headed for his desk, Fafner scribbled a reply and an authorization for magically expanding a stretch of sand beach in Amager and thought back to twenty years ago. "That intelligent woman, what was her name? The one they tried to put in Azkaban for so long until her husband killed her," he spoke softly, jolting his memory. "Harman... Harmony? Hermione! The notorious criminal witch Hermione Granger! How could I forget?"

He stood up quickly and the chair slid against the wall, almost tumbling a few framed photos. With a wand wave, he summoned the Auror report from her welcoming on board the NorthSea Floaters ship bound for Aalborg, and immediately confirmed his conclusion. The description of Mrs Helen Harman was that of a five feet five, black-haired woman in her thirties, and he slapped his forehead as he finally understood Belinde's confusion and commentary about glamours.

"Those eyes. The intelligent eyes are the same I once met, yes," Fafner recalled and tapped the top of his table. "But she's too young to _be_ Granger, even if she staged her own death. Hmmm... I love a good mystery!"

"Mr Funk?" a voice asked in Danish tongue from the open door to his office.

"Ah, come in, Auror Karlson."

"Sorry to disturb you, Mr Funk. There's been a reported Muggle disappearance in the vessel carrying the British witch. When is she scheduled to arrive?"

Fafner felt the blood leave his face, and a single word rang in his ears. _Fiend._

* * *

The mattress he rested on was shaking. He first thought it was an earthquake, the sort that used to happen in Norway when the trolls got it in their single-minded little heads to run after the Muggle cycling competitors of the Jotunheim Tour. Harry chuckled at his own incompetence at trying to control, or even push some of the trolls away, and suddenly marvelled at the clarity with which he could remember something that happened more than fifteen years ago, in his first year as an Auror on international tour.

"Pretty trolls, aren't they Harry?" a soft voice spoke inside his mind. "Focus on the pretty trolls."

He tried to move but couldn't, his body didn't respond and his eyes wouldn't open at all. All he saw was darkness, and trolls, and Ginny... Her body split, entrails spilling down his legs. Ginny fighting him, demanding more Galleons. Ginny ordering him to care for family. Ginny giving him a potion he had studied himself in Auror training. Ginevra and Molly casting Fealty Charms on him. Ginevra parading herself and picking a young suitor for the night, as he looked on, oblivious.

"Oh Merlin..."

Tremors shook the place he lay upon again, and the voice began to sing the same lullaby he'd been listening to for the past hours, or perhaps days. "Or maybe years? No, it's only been a day or so," he concluded with certainty, with a clarity he'd never felt before in his life.

"Look at the pretty trolls, Harry. They run like the wind!"

Juliette told him she was locked in the cellar; he didn't believe her. Juliette was never in her room; he didn't care. Juliette was too thin and small as a child; he wouldn't see it. Ginevra said it was alright. Ginevra told him he was a good adoptive father. Ginevra dowsed him with Slavery Potions.

"Oh Merlin..."

Harry had two jobs, a ridiculous position in the Ministry for Magic as a Permanent Consultant and as International Salesman for Umbridge Undry Cauldrons and Lab Equipment. Dolores Umbridge's brother was his boss, and he was everyone's laughing stock. Harry had to sell Potter Manor, and the buyer was Draco Malfoy. Harry had to close the Potter Vault at Gringotts, and beg Neville Longbottom for loans every year. Harry had to travel all over Europe, and his own children despised him. Ginevra and Molly had enslaved him.

"Oh Merlin..."

"Watch them jump, Harry! There are lots of pretty trolls," the voice pleaded again.

Hermione was in love with Ron, and he never doubted it. Hermione was lying in a pool of blood, and he never doubted she loved Ron. Hermione was trying to convince him they were slaves to the Weasleys, and he never doubted she loved Ron. Hermione told him she loved him, and he never doubted she loved Ron. Hermione was always right, and he never doubted that at all. Ginevra and Molly destroyed his life.

"Oh Merlin..."

He watched the trolls stop and stare stupidly at a bright point of blinding light on the horizon. He averted his eyes and tried to protect the kind voice with his arms, telling it not to worry about anything.

"I'm not worried, Harry. I'm with you," the shapeless blue Nargle said and snuggled under Harry's arms.

The light became more than a single pinprick, it grew and burst across the land, scorching Harry Potter's mind with a deafening roar, fire roaming through every corner of his being, dislodging memories and jumbling certainties, destroying barriers and releasing unfulfilled dreams.

Harry Potter was free.

He opened his eyes and stared at a white ceiling, breathing in and out to control himself and acknowledge all that he'd recalled. Reality and dream were still one single world, but he had no doubt at all that he could trust the voice, and if the voice agreed with the memories, than it was all truth. He was about to mourn Hermione's death when a spell was cast in his direction.

"Stupefy!" Beta cast on the powerful wizard. The Unspeakable had just arrived to continue researching the former Potter and found, to his surprise, a half-healed man whose skin had vaporized. The copies of the healing charts his Imperioused Healer had prepared were almost unbelievable, but if anyone could survive such torment it was this man. After all, he had defeated You-Know-Who.

The wizard was expelling enough magic to destroy a whole wing of St Mungo's, and yet the waves of raw magic seemed to be almost controlled, and stopped the moment he'd entered the room. Beta found it odd, believing at first that it was a consequence of his presence, but then realized the man had actually opened his eyes and was breathing deeply, as if trying to recall the involuntary motions of the act.

"Well, now, Mr Harry the Unnamed," Beta spoke and pulled the same items he had used the first time to collect magic samples. "What impossibility have you accomplished today?"

"I achieved freedom," Harry replied, shaking the Stupefy hex and turning his head at the Unspeakable.

"I see," Beta replied evenly, wondering how in Merlin's name could he have Ennervated himself, and deciding to make him forget his presence. "Obliviate!"

Beta started to collect his samples when Harry grabbed his wrist in a very forceful grip, the still pink, raw skin that had been regrown soft and silky in his fingers. "Your Obliviation won't work on me, Unspeakable."

"What the?!"

"_Aurors! Beard-Def Alpha, in room!_" Harry screamed in a voice that sounded foreign to his own ears. A voice laden with authority and confidence.

Ten seconds later, three Aurors burst into the room, acknowledging the signal to protect a single wizard from one attacker only. Beta was summarily petrified and stunned, and an Expelliarmus disarmed him for good measure. The Aurors looked askance at the man with green eyes and bald head, wincing a little at the sight of his face, brow-less and criss-crossed with purple veins.

The sound of hurried steps preceded a group of healers led by a man Harry recognized at once, and that brought tears to his eyes because he reminded him of Hermione. "Healer Treeleaf, it's good to see you."

"Harry? You're conscious! By Dumbledore's sweets, how's this possible?"

"I had a little help. Aurors, I wish to denounce an Obliviation attempt by this Unspeakable," he said and the Aurors actually cringed. "Terrence, where's my wand?"

"I-I'm sorry Harry, you can't have a wand because, well, you're a ward of St Mungo's..."

Harry narrowed his partially healed eyes and sighed. "That means I can't legally allege the unwilling Obliviation either, doesn't it?"

The Aurors nodded dumbly, and cringed even further when Harry turned on them. "Speak up! Can I or can I not?"

"No sir, you cannot," one of them answered.

"Terrence?" Harry pleaded and the Mind healer understood.

"Everyone, out! I need the room to my patient. And take this ... wizard ... out with you," he added, motioning at the petrified Unspeakable. Treeleaf waited for the last healer to leave and turned back to Harry. Before he could utter a word, however, the patient spoke.

"I know-- I know everything, I-- How-- Why would they..."

"Do you need a Calming Draught?" he asked patiently.

Harry shook his head, smiled at the little voice soothing his mind and looked back at the expectant healer. "They used a Slavery Cocktail, didn't they? For approximately thirty years?" Raised eyebrows from Terrence were all the confirmation he needed. "And now I've been deemed incapacitated. Have they taken my name away as well?"

A nod answered him this time.

"I'll choose to be legally Harry Evans, but I'll use the Potter name anyway," he stated. "Hermione would be proud."

"The criminal?" Terrence exclaimed without being able to stop himself.

"_She wasn't a criminal!_ Hermione was also under a Slavery Potion and-- And--" he paused and looked away, before composing himself again with the voice's help. The voice of a self-styled blue Nargle that sounded suspiciously like Luna Lovegood. "How long until my body heals completely?" he finally asked.

"At this astounding rate of progress? By noon tomorrow for sure... Harry I'm sorry I couldn't help you, twenty years ago, I should have pressed further but..."

"But you believed the rumours, and the Weasleys, and the Prophet's propaganda."

Terrence looked ashamed, but then recovered and stood taller. "Are you ready to become a full-fledged wizard again?"

"Yes, I need to find someone very dear to me. And beg for her forgiveness," he answered, thinking of Juliette Melanie Granger and feverishly hoping she was still alive somewhere.

The recipient of Harry's hope was, undoubtedly, still alive but in another country altogether. Mel had already spent all of the money she'd taken from the Harman woman's bank account in the magical quarter of Copenhagen, and was now spending the last of the boy's - whatever his name was - to purchase a Muggle motorhome, which she'd have to learn how to operate first, much to her chagrin.

"Belle, d'you know how to work this effin' thing?"

"I'm sorry, Madame Harman. I have very little Primitive understanding, and I know what it's for, but not how it works," she said in a very repentant tone, almost whimpering.

"Bugger. Just go finish the purchase, and I'll talk to some of the lads over here, if they understand any English at all," she instructed and walked up to the group of Muggles handling more of their carriages. "What would the Baron Bonnamorte do in a situation like this?" she asked herself, smiling fondly at the memory of her little childhood pleasures.

She'd started with an hesitant gait to her step, but soon gained a bounce. "Imperio!" she cast at a Muggle driving one of the dealership vehicles. The man stopped, opened the door and left, leaving the car to slowly roll down the slope, right through the gates and into a busy street.

Horns blaring, the sound of crashing metal and shrill screams came from beyond the manicured hedgerow, and the eyewitnesses ran to the accident site to help, ignoring the careless worker who'd caused it.

Mel steered the dazed Muggle to her motorhome and pushed him into the driver's seat, closing the door with a bang and squelch, the result of a Colloportus spell. She then hopped on through the door leading into the mobile living quarters and waited, fiddling and playing with the knobs and buttons on the central console, finding tiny people dancing to some weird music to watch while waiting. Until the on-board telly suddenly sparked and fried.

"Aw, shite! Damn magic and electronics," she lamented and bit her lower lip, missing the way the music beat had made her arms shake and head roll. "What if?" she whispered and shrugged, putting a finger on the screen and concentrating. She felt her body tickle all over and the uncomfortable feeling of being stretched followed, and soon after she could feel the man's hands on her leather covered wheel, and his even breathing against her cool surface made of glass.

"Reparo," she cast softly, almost in a daze, and she felt something change within herself. Mel reached for a spark and, with but a thought, the surge of energy lit the motorhome and she pulled her finger back out of the console with an audible snap, smiling at the repaired and working entertainment centre.

"By the almighty Aesirs!" Belinde's voice came through the lowered window of the passenger's side, obviously having seen the entire event. "M-Madame Harman, I-I-I swear on my blood, I've _never_ seen anything like t-that!"

"And you haven't today. Obliviate!" Mel incanted and told Belinde that she was just coming back with the official documents, and that the man in the driving spot had just offered himself to be their _chauffeur_ for life. For as long as he lived, rather, which wouldn't be very long if Mel had things going her way tonight.

"Quick! Tell him to drive us south and find a forest or somewhere isolated to camp in," she barked at Belinde and walked back into the motorhome's living area, looking through the back window just in time to see a pair of wizards Apparating on the street. Their robes had the striped red and blue she'd seen the Jutlandish Aurors wearing, and wondered if they had come in response to her Unforgivable or if Mr F had somehow found out who she was.

The motorhome sped away and merged into the road's traffic, taking a right turn after an overhead pass and entering a motorway, quickly leaving Copenhagen behind. Mel kept looking from window to window, and while her previous concern was whether or not she was being chased by Aurors, right now she was giddily looking at the vehicles rushing past.

"Look at all the colours! And the sizes, that one's gotta be as big as a bloody dragon!" Mel said and pointed at the large cargo lorry to their right. She caressed her lovers' remains hanging on a necklace, and talked to them as if they were sitting right next to her, pointing at this and that on the side of the road, and laughing as if JP or Mike had suddenly made a joke as they had been so prone to do.

She briefly met Belinde's eyes, and the Jutlander looked back with distrust and pity etched on her face. "Belle! Come here!" she commanded and pointed her index finger at the floor in front of her, satisfied that she jumped to comply. "Sit!"

Belinde was about to sit on the floor, but she stopped. "No," she mumbled.

"What?" Mel asked, going for the handle of her blade with her right hand.

"I said no, I'm _not_ a beast, Madame Harman."

Mel realized the woman's pale blue eyes were now tinged with defiance, but the fear and submissiveness still lurked in them. She decided it was enough of this foolishness and that she'd just slice her throat, raised her blade and prepared to strike down.

"Mistress, please!" screamed Belle, crouching deep on the floor. "Don't make me hurt you..."

"Hurt me? You-- Ooof!"

She didn't see it coming. The fisted hand knocked the air out of Mel's lungs and threw her against the wall, and she was sure someone actually growled. And it wasn't her. Belinde then pulled Mel by her hair, kicked the blade away, and dropped her down on the carpeted floor, face down, locking her every movement with amazingly strong limbs.

"Your effin' funeral," Mel growled and buried her forehead against the vibrating motorhome, becoming more than a witch, less than a human, gaining control over matter and losing part of her identity and consciousness. She felt the smooth road beneath spinning rubber wheels and the wind sweeping glass and metal, and hands and feet guiding her safely around other vehicles.

With a burst of willpower, Mel made the vehicle swirl and swing, forcing the Imperioused Muggle to fight against her, like a dragon-handler steering one of those magnificent beasts, and shaking Belinde out from top of herself.

"Geroff me, bitch!" she said as her face snapped from the floor, her skin as fluffed and cream-coloured as the carpet itself.

Belinde was astounded for the second time in less than an hour, although she couldn't remember the first time, and watched in amazement as the woman she called Helen Harman regained a normal face after _controlling_ the motorhome without using a wand. "What are you?"

"A witch," replied Mel. "And you'll soon be meat for my experiments."

"You're the killer... You destroyed the Potters in Britain!"

"_No!_ She had them killed! _She_ had them killed!" screamed Mel, wandlessly summoning her blade, but then fear gripped her soul. "The Potters, she says. As in more than one? Did uncle Harry k-kill himself?" she whispered, faltering on her stance.

"Uncle Harry? Harry Potter's your uncle?" Belinde said, incredulity etched to her voice. "You tried to kill your own family?"

"They aren't _his_ family! He loved my mother, Belle! _My mother!_" she ranted and pointed the sharp curved tip of the black blade at the taller witch. The Muggle continued to drive, oblivious.

"Please lower your weapons, Mistress Harman..."

"_They_ destroyed _my_ family! All my family! _All of it!_" she finally screamed and sank to her knees, her chest heaving deeply. "But I'll kill 'em all... And I'll bring them all back," Mel promised and looked up at Belinde with a frightening, delirious and murderous expression.

"Stupefy!"

Mel batted the hex away easily. "Too simple, too slow Belle..."

"What about this, then?" she asked in her mother tongue. "Brandslange!"

A series of coiling fire snakes surrounded Mel on all sides, and as she began dispelling them, Belinde moved with inhuman speed and punched a strong left-handed uppercut at her jaw. Mel fell like a sack of shrunken pumpkins, limp on the floor.

At the same time, Belinde let herself fall back on one of the leather sofas, bringing both hands to her face. "Who _is_ this woman? Why do I feel so ... subservient ... around her?" she wondered. "Mistress-- Madame Harman looked so... broken-hearted when she spoke of them. Who is _them_? What did she mean by _her_ family being destroyed? Should I just call on the Aurors?"

Sighing and looking at the dazed Muggle as he left the motorway and drove into a smaller road with dense vegetation on both sides, she stunned Mrs Harman again and used an inspection charm to reveal all hidden magical artefacts. "By the Aesirs!" she whispered and started collecting items. Two wands, one charmed blade, three charmed all-purpose knives, a belt filled with invisible and expanded pockets as well as charms all over her clothes made for a one-person Hit Auror Squad.

The woman's owl had been fussing and diving to claw her all the time, and Belinde was forced to stun the bird too, if she wanted to know who she was dealing with. "This is wrong, I should leave it for the Aurors," she kept repeating, but the anguish in the young woman's voice, and the pull of her strength were too hard to dismiss.

A thick book bound in blue leather was the first item from Madame Harman's pockets that looked really interesting, and she hoped it wasn't warded, because she had no experience with any defensive magic beyond school-level spells; the Fire Snake-Nest hex she used had been taught to her by an Auror boyfriend, and she sent him a silent thank-you for it. Flipping the cover open, a neat script greeted her in English:

_This book is personal property of Hermione Granger. Please return it to me at your earliest convenience, and feel free to read my proscribed works "Offering Freedom to Your Elf", "The Enlightened Citizen", "What Magic Makes Us Human?" and "Stronghold of Power" within these pages in the meantime. Thank you._

"Hermione Granger's very own notebook... This is amazing," she spoke out loud. "The Citizen has been banned by the International Confederation of Wizards for over a decade, and it's right here!" Forgetting about the woman knocked out on the floor, she sat back, looked for the correct page number in the neat index, and started reading the revolutionary manifesto that she'd only ever heard rumours about.

The motorhome finally drove a few hundred yards over uneven terrain and stopped, the Muggle man Belinde didn't know the name of staring straight ahead at nothing, and she slumped back on the sofa after finishing the second chapter. "She's right. It goes against everything I've been taught, but she is absolutely right," concluded Belinde, muttering in her native tongue. "I _am_ part of the problem, and it's up to me to become part of the solution. Is that what Madame Harman is? An enlightened citizen?"

Belinde considered herself lucky. Her original family had been sailing the Northern Seas for generations, offering magical healing and runic divination to Vikings and all manner of Nordic peoples, magic and Primitive, even after the Statute of Secrecy was implemented five centuries ago, and now she lived in one of the most progressive and tolerant organized wizarding countries, Jutland.

It was a good thing too, since Belinde was an Arctic werewolf.

Clawed and bitten as a baby while her birth parents looked for rare magical plants in the frozen shores of northern Greenland, she'd been cast out and raised in a wizarding orphanage - a place she had very fond, happy memories of - until the age of fifteen, when the local law allowed her to claim inheritance from her family, although she refused to carry their name. Nonetheless, Belinde had been treated as all disadvantaged inhabitants of Jutland were: with great care yet obviously looked down upon because of their condition.

"It may be kindness, but it sure isn't equality," she pondered, absently scratching her back where the wolf had sunk its teeth. She sighed and settled down to read chapter three, whose long title was "Unlike Muggles, Witches and Wizards cannot be Born Free and Equal". Belinde shot a miffed look at the inert pages of the book, "Excuse me? She spends the previous chapters talking about fairness and rights for all sentient magical creatures, and now she retracts herself?" Curiosity won over confusion, and the Jutlander woman continued to devour paragraph after paragraph, page after page until the sun went down.

Their _chauffeur_ had long since fallen asleep on the wheel, having found a secluded space to park deep inside the forest, and despite the absence of light, Belinde's wide open pupils enabled her to read clearly. Her mind reeled with Granger's interpretation of magical society, and she was trying to cope with a new view of the world she lived in. In it, werewolves like herself weren't discriminated because they were cursed to turn into irrational beasts once a month, rather they were discriminated because werewolves become very strong human beings _in-between_ full moons; humans that are stronger than wizards.

In this world, goblins weren't subjugated because they lost a war which they were guilty of starting in the first place, rather they were subjugated because their greed and cunning, as well as metallurgical prowess, surpassed that of wizards.

In the world according to Granger, Begraensker or Squibs as she called them, weren't second-class citizens because they couldn't do magic and reflected poorly on true magical families, but rather because they could easily understand and wander into both the magic and Primitive worlds without blowing anything up, unlike wizards.

She spared no grief against sentient beings, however. Granger called House-Elves cowardly creatures who had the makings for a collective society yet were too afraid to organize themselves. Centaurs were exposed as oblivious relics of times passed, crafting their own extinction by refusing to communicate with their magical brethren and failing to realize that tolerance was better than annihilation. Her writings declared goblins as opportunistic felons for selling their wares without truly explaining their worth and principles of ownership to unsuspecting wizards and witches; werewolves as fools for allowing themselves to be caught in the full-moon unaware; and accused the giants of being obstinate idiots for clinging to centuries-old hatred of human giant-killing knights that have been dead for ages.

Rounding up the community of magical beings, vampires were called passive-aggressive snobs who needed to understand they were part of a whole magical society, and berated Squibs for reciprocating hatred and distrust with more of the same, instead of focusing on the real issues at hand. Banshees, Veela, Merfolk and Acromantulas escaped no criticism or analysis on the reasons for their status and why wizards feared them. She went so far as to denounce Dementors as misunderstood yet truly evil, foul creatures, and defended the rights of garden gnomes to colonize backyards as long as they don't trip witches and wizards to the ground.

And then, Hermione Granger exposed the true nature of the regular wizarding citizen: doing the Demiguise!

She proposed that those most powerful among wizards were named Dark or Light and revered as living gods because they were an excuse for absolving oneself from responsibility. "The Dark Lord is too terrifying, so I have no choice but to follow him," and "the Leader of the Light must solve this problem, so I take no action and blame him for failing me" exemplified the act of doing the Demiguise and becoming invisible to the world, believing the world's problems would wash over them and turn invisible as well, so everything would be all right.

According to her, no witch or wizard could be born free and equal because some were slaves to prophecy, others were blessed and cursed with powers beyond understanding, and more still were born with abilities that made them unequal to one another. That inequality was dampened by the I.C.W. through mandatory registration of Animagi, forceful tracking of Metamorphomagi, discrete imprisonment of Empaths, and so many other denigrating actions done in the name of an orderly and secret magical world. A world that can't treat its own citizens fairly, be they witches and wizards or any manner of sentient magical beings.

"The enlightened citizen, of any species, will look beyond the obscuring veil of personal comfort," Hermione Granger had written in the closing chapter. "He, she or it will assume responsibility for his, her or its actions, and realize that civil disobedience is required when one understands the fact that even a kind and benevolent master is, no matter how fair, still a master, and that ever since the formation of the Wizengamot in Britain, and the creation of the International Confederation of Wizards for the world at large, magical beings have become vassals to a self-destructive, oppressive and tyrannical self-serving regime, created to perpetuate false notions of magic, while keeping a semblance of order and balance to mask the inherent evil that robs each and every one of us of our unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Belinde let her arms fall on her lap, loosely holding on the the open book, and released a shuddering breath. "Of course this book was banned, how could it be otherwise?" she asked herself, and then turned a sad look onto the woman stunned by the floor. "Where did Mistress-- Madame Harman find this? Maybe she's Granger herself... But wasn't she murdered years ago?" Deciding to sleep on it, she stunned, petrified and magically bound the British traveller, waiting a few minutes for any Auror visitors.

No Aurors arrived, but an elegant owl soon tapped the window and delivered a polite reminder to use magic when alone or among family, and whether the magic user wished to register this location as her or his place of residence, since they had been monitoring magic at that location during the entire evening. A quick reply identifying herself as a Tourism and Immigration Department employee later, Belinde finally curled up on the bed and fell asleep.

* * *

"So tell me again, Unspeakable Beta. How exactly were you bested by," Croaker paused to cough and hide a snicker. "Excuse me. By three Junior Aurors on guard duty, fresh--" He snorted unashamedly this time, "Fresh out of training?"

"Mmmh!"

"I'm sorry, Unspeakable. You'll have to modulate better," said Croaker, tilting his face to look at the upside-down wizard, watching him struggle to speak without a mouth to do so. He had vanished his lips and there was now a featureless patch of skin over his teeth and jawbone, where those lips used to be.

"_Mmmmh!_"

"I grow tired of this," the Head Unspeakable huffed and slashed his wand, a cutting hex erupting from its tip. The hex cut into Beta's face, creating a faux-mouth and slicing several teeth as well, making him scream in pain. "Two words, Unspeakable Beta: Oddment Legillimens!"

Croaker enjoyed the wizard's cries of pain and took comfort in them to navigate his tidy existence. All the new Alphabetic Inductees had such orderly thoughts, mainly because of the brain purge they were subjected to upon acceptance to the Department, and were easily Legillimenced with a secret magic word. Beta's last experiences were uninteresting. He'd been lured into chasing a worthless case of magic in proximity to Muggles, but the rationale behind it was sound, even if Beta himself though it was more of a hunch.

Naturally, the Head Unspeakable was old enough to know what all experienced investigators knew, that a hunch is your subconscious mind realizing a fact before the conscious mind does, and that woman's image was going to be put in a Pensieve bulletin for the Retrieval Squad as soon as he finished reprimanding Unspeakable Beta for his less-than-commendable performance.

The visible change in Harry the Unnamed was startling; either St Mungo's personnel had somehow neglected to carry their magic-bound instructions to copy every single new healing technique to the Department of Mysteries, or the man was even more full of surprises than he already was. Croaker watched as the healing patient yelled the Auror textbook code for one male wizard under threat by one single magic user after breaking a stunning hex _and_ rejecting an Obliviation.

"Circe be praised! He would a formidable Unspeakable with that ability," he thought and absently rocked around Beta's mind, unconcerned about any damage. Deciding to recruit the non-entity before it could reclaim any semblance of independence, Croaker pulled out and let the underling fall on the floor of the interrogation room, zapping out of the deepest levels of the Ministry for Magic in silence.

He Apparated within the secret passageways used by his Department, and quickly sat in one of the wheelchairs, headed for the Magical Containment Wing. Once near the room assigned to Mr Harry the Unnamed, only decades of self-control allowed him to keep from killing every healer in sight.

"Very well. I, Healer Terrence Treeleaf, do hereby proclaim Harry James Evans, formerly Potter once banished, as a fit and self-sufficient citizen of the wizarding world. So mote it be!"

Applause was heard from the four healers and three aides gathered in the room, and Croaker cursed that meddling mind healer to Hades and back, wrapping the invisibility-cloak tighter around his body to stand closer. Harry Evans was still as bald and his skin as red and full of veins as Beta remembered him, yet he was standing tall and made the simple hospital gown look impressive. This was Harry Potter no longer. This wasn't the man who disappointed so many as the years passed. Here was a wizard the Ministry for Magic will fear.

Harry started at the venomous hissing he suddenly heard in his mind. The Nargle living inside him was actually trying to reach out and attack something which he couldn't see clearly behind the healers, but the cleansing his body and magic had suffered allowed him to do what he did best when he'd been young, which was to act in the nick of time, innovate with unheard abilities, and quite frankly have a very big reserve of good luck. "Accio invisibility cloak! Alumbrare!" he cast without even thinking, followed by a strange incantation few people other than Hermione Granger ever took the time to find and learn, "Seleehktuuhn!"

A fluttering large garment zoomed past the congregated healers and the form of a man was revealed with the widely cast anti-disillusionment jinx, but before the man could move at all, the third spell impacted his chest and slowed his movements down, coming to a stop only after his skin and clothes turned into mossy, grey granite.

"Dear Merlin! Who's this?"

Harry shrugged, "No idea... Though I'd wager it's another Unspeakable. Are those Aurors still around?" he asked, sidestepping some of the excited healers as they probed the man turned into a stone statue, poking his head out the door and looking up and down the corridor.

As if summoned, one of the three Junior Aurors who attended his coded call for action earlier walked around the corner, nursing a steaming cup of coffee in his hands. He was about to sip from it when the cup flew out of his hands, straight into Harry's outstretched fingers.

"Got another one for you guys. It's raining Mystery-Men today!" Harry said and pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the statue. "Now that I'm a wizard again, I'd like you to use that mirror and call Whitewaters for me."

Nodding dumbly, the Auror swung his wand and sent a call for his two colleagues, before pulling a communications mirror from a pocket and shouting for the Senior Auror in charge of the Training and Recruitment Office.

"Erm... Mr Potter, sir? Senior Auror Whitewaters is on the other side," the Junior said and handed Harry the mirror, handle first.

"William Whitewaters?"

"Bless me callous toes! Wha' happened to yeh, Scarface?" an old wizard with a strong resemblance to the long deceased Mad-Eye Moody, sans the spinning magical eye, answered from beyond the reflective surface. "Last I heard, yer family was werewolf chow!"

"Gentle like a dwarves' mallet as always, aren't you sir?" replied Harry, mourning the loss of life, and saddened by the fact he actually couldn't bring himself to stop thinking Ginevra got what she deserved. "So that's the usual suspect? A werewolf attack?"

"Tha's speculation, trainee! Heard yeh got ditched by 'em brats too," the wizard prodded, testing Harry. "Yer Friddy Potter was quite smug 'bout takin' action against a werewolf settlement. She 'n yer son said it was 'em who'd attacked," he added with a non-committal shrug.

"They aren't my son and daughter any longer. And I'm legally an Evans now, though I'll use the Potter name," Harry explained, before running a hand over his bald head. "Will you let me test again? For Auror Training?"

"Yeh're a failure, Potty! I'd relish a chance ter kick yer arse any time, so be me guest to pop by." The Senior Auror snapped and visibly slammed his mirror face down on the table, cutting the communication.

Harry narrowed his eyes and tossed the mirror to the Junior Auror, who had now been joined by the other two Aurors of his squad. Sipping from the coffee he'd Accioed earlier, Harry stemmed the sadness of betrayal, and quietly mourned for a life lost. He hoped with everything he had that Hermione's daughter had survived, because while she was very smart, she was still a Squib and her chances of escaping a werewolf attack were quite minimal.

"Am I fit to go?" he asked the healers at large.

Treeleaf snorted. "Not a chance, Harry. _But_, I know you'll come back this time," he added after raising a hand to stop the patient from arguing. "You aren't healed, but you may leave if you promise to be here every day at seven o'clock in the evening."

"I promise. I have much to think about, to come to terms with..." he answered truthfully. The Nargle was good at making him level-headed through it all. "Anyway, gotta run!" he said and transfigured the simple hospital gown into training robes, twirled his phoenix feather wand, and Dissapparated silently from behind supposedly unbreakable wards.

Harry landed in front of the Miles O. Myles Auror Training Facility, somewhere in the coastline where the weather sucks and the food is even worse. He remembered thinking this was the departure point for Azkaban Island but he'd never gotten a clear confirmation of that. Lifting his head, he realized for the first time that it was probably past midnight, and that Whitewaters was going to be even more pissed at being disturbed at this ungodly hour. "Poor Junior Auror, he'll be demoted to prison clerk by morning," Harry chuckled and drank from the coffee cup.

The humming Nargle seemed to agree and he looked at the foreboding barred main gate. There were ripples of ... something ... he couldn't quite describe and that he'd never felt before, but suddenly he realized these were magical fields, and he was feeling them without the use of ward detection spells, just like Dumbledore used to do.

"Dumbledore," Harry spat the name in a growl, and the Nargle stopped humming.

"He was a poor man, Harry. Do you know why?" the voice that sounded like his long-lost friend Luna asked. "Because Albus, like Tom, never understood love, friendship or bravery. Neither would live and die for another like lovers do. Neither would trust his entire being to another like friends do. And neither would have the courage to change for another like brave men do."

"True. Dumbledore died for an ideal, not for anyone he loved... Would I be capable of doing any of those things?" Harry silently asked himself, and the Nargle, with a dreamy expression.

"You already have. Many times you forfeited your life to protect someone, many times you showed some of your deepest insecurities, and trusted your back in battle to someone, and you willingly changed from a timid boy who never knew any love, friendship or bravery, into someone wonderful _for_ someone."

"And how much of that was just Molly or Dumbledore messing around my head?" he snorted. "Or Riddle? Or Snape for that matter?"

The Nargle laughed a thrilling laugh, which made him see colours everywhere. "Your will was, and is, too strong. Why do you think they were always so frustrated with you? I didn't see it then, sadly, but having your memories now, I'd say the Blibbering Humdingers had every reason to infest you and Hermione."

"My dear Hermione... And my darling Julie! I've got to find her, I know she's out there alone." Resolute again, Harry started when he realized something. "Are you really her? Are you Lu--"

"No Harry. I ... _was_ ... someone you knew as her, but I'm just a blue Nargle, and much of me is you, as some of you will be me." The voice seemed to think for a second, "Unless there's some really appetizing mistletoe around, then I might be tempted to leave you for a while."

Shaking his head, he focused on the task at hand: regaining his Auror position and using it to find Juliette. Everything else, like what to do with the Weasley clan and how to reopen the investigation on Hermione's murder would come later. "Should I attend to Ginevra's burial service? Not that Jimmy or Frida would consider summoning me, but still," he wondered while breaching the wards carefully, knowing that Whitewaters would've upgraded them to maximum sensitivity and lethal strength as soon as he cut the mirror.

"Oh, Merlin... Wasn't Tom's history enough of a lesson? The Dark Lord born of a loveless fake marriage, and they do the same to me, to Hermione, to my own mother perhaps." Harry's unclogged mind, combined with the analytical process he'd learned partially in school and in Auror training, as well as the jaded, cynical part of it, began to piece conspiracy theories reaching as far back as Grindewald's time.

It was enough to doubt his own birth, and every single decision he's ever made in life. But he wouldn't break down, not yet, not while his niece was still out there, at the mercy of whoever attacked his... Home? Residence? Slave shack? "What should I call that place?" he asked himself.

A tug of his wand in the right place while murmuring a pledge of honesty and goodwill allowed him to _see_ the wards opening up to him, an amazing show of magic he stared at dreamily. The Nargle interrupted his contemplation and shouted at him to fall down, and he did without questioning.

"Bombarding hex or probably an overpowered Reductor," he mumbled and rolled over to scan his surroundings. A figure moved against the outer wall, and while it wasn't a solid form nor was it a faint ripple distorting the air, the glass-like shape was clearly that of a man. "That's Whitewaters under an invisibility cloak," Harry knew for certain, and then charged ahead with every incarcerating jinx and hex he'd learned in his Auror training, plus a few his newly liberated memory provided.

As the dust settled, Harry was down on his knees panting and the Senior Auror was leg-locked, bleeding and wrapped in golden chains inside a barred stone room. "Tha' ain't half bad, Boy-Who-Failed!" Whitewaters said and cut the chains before blasting the walls of the transfigured prison cell, using a healing charm on his broken leg. "Repulso! Flippendo!"

Harry rolled over and escaped the banishing hex but couldn't escape the jinx that made his world flip upside-down. He saw Whitewaters aim again and, with a flash of light, he felt his body stiffen.

"Yeh've gotta be wantin' somethin' bad... Yer gonna go after 'em killers, innit right?"

Feeling the magic binding his body, Harry calmed himself while the blue Nargle sang, and somehow melted the magical pressure of the Petrificus Totalus, which allowed him to surprise Whitewaters for the first time ever. "No, I'm going to find my niece," he said calmly. "Corpuswasi! Incarcerous! Aurum circulus!"

The Senior Auror was thrown back in the direction Harry's wand pointed, bound in simple ropes this time but surrounded by the hardest imprisonment spell Aurors are taught, which only a small part of the Hit Aurors can ever cast reliably. The golden circle was a physically restraining hex, which also negated any and all magic to and from the inside. Harry held it for as long as he could, but after barely a minute he slumped to the ground and Whitewaters was freed.

"C'mon Auror Potter. Yeh've got a lot ter explain tonight," the old wizard said and cut the ropes holding him, waving at the main gate and walking inside without sparing a glance at Harry.

With an effort, he picked himself up and dragged his heavy body inside the building as quickly as he could. Somehow, he found a cup of something foul-smelling in his hands, and discovered he was sitting in the mess hall. "How'd I get in here so fast?"

Whitewaters blinked and burst out laughing, which made his scarred face look even worse. "It's yeh alright, only Scarface woulda ask dumb stuff like tha', innit right? I levitated yer sorry arse all the way here." After a few chuckles, the man went serious and pierced Harry with a pointed look. "Yeh ain't the same Potter, though. Spell it fer me, wha' happened?"

"I was in Italy, selling cauldrons when an Auror let me know there had been an attack on my-- On Ginevra Weasley's house." He saw Whitewaters raise an eyebrow at his choice of words, but the older wizard remained silent. "She was dead, spell marks all over the house and her body. I lost consciousness and only recovered sporadically within a room in St Mungo's, during which time James and Fredericka signed my incapacitation and banishment from the family.

"Something happened to me, and a team of healers confirmed this. I've been dowsed with an Slavery Cocktail for twenty-five years, perhaps even longer if my suspicions are proven right. Hell, I probably had my mind altered with Legillimency and Obliviation in my first year of Hogwarts!"

"Can yeh prove all tha', Dark Lord Killer?"

"The potions were verified by St Mungo's, and I've got this ... knowledge ... of things I've never had before. Shit, Whitewaters, you know how I was! Confused, distracted, unable to perform the simplest spells reliably. And just today, this Unspeakable tried to use Obliviate on me and it just fucking _bounced_, it didn't even tickle my mind at all!"

Crossing his arms, the Senior Auror kept staring at Harry. "Yeh know Unspeakables ain't to be triffled with, Potty-mouth. Oh, 'n if yeh've been incapacitated, yeh ain't no Potter either."

"I told you I'm legally an Evans now, sir. Do the charm and confirm it if you want to. All I want is to get my Aurorship back and access to the case files. Juliette, my niece, she wasn't in the house and I _have_ to find her."

"What's this? Hot-headed-Potter thinks before he jumps? Bless me gonads, I'm gonna faint!" Whitewaters boomed and cracked a laugh. "I'm takin' you in fer a week-long fast training and re-education program. Yeh've got no home 'n yeh've got no gold, so yeh're stayin' at the Academy. I can't legally give yeh access ter parchmentwork or crime locations, but I like this new Potter. I'd say maybe Auror Trainee Evans can find a way ter see those files 'n visit the scene as part o' his training?"

Harry smiled in relief, drank the foul Restorative Draught in front of him, and followed Whitewaters to an empty room with a cot, where he dropped down on his back and fell asleep, wrapped in a hospital gown that had lost its transfigured state.

* * *

Notes:

1.- "Mimicreus"; from mimicry, the act of mimicking. Mimicking means to resemble an organism or an object in one's surroundings for concealment or protection from predators.  
"Alumbrare"; from Spanish and earlier Latin "illuminare", meaning to illuminate, to expose.  
"Seleehktuuhn"; from Mayan language, meaning a terror in stone, used also to mean painted stone, as totems carved and adorned with bright colours. Pronounced "see-layk-toon".  
"Brandslange"; from Danish, literally snakes of fire.  
"Corpuswasi" following the form of "Waddiwasi", change the prefix "wadd" for something else, and voila, instant controlled banishing of something. "Corpus" is Latin for body.

2.- The idea of evil Unspeakables is from Partially Kissed Hero, a story by Perfect Lionheart. It might be from other sources too, sorry if I can't remember and credit properly.

3.- Mel Granger and The Brewer will regain their protagonist roles in Chapter 3.


End file.
